The fact of having a council helps e.g. moving maemo.org to community ownership, having a Maemo Summit in the terms wished by the community, having the maemo.org team wished by the community, having a succesful Mer project, organizing the Fremantle unstable releases and having all in all a better understanding from Nokia and the community about what is going on and what are the topics that really need discussion.

You could do all this without a council, but the fact of having 5 elected members trusted to find consensus and a single voice when needed is very helpful. No call center or customers survey will provide an equivalent.

The council plays no major role when it comes to have a d-pad here or there, a full PIM suite, soft-poweroff put upfront, screen rotation, Canola or a webkit browser, etc, etc.