Up here, I've not heard of anything like that happening. The telecoms fear the CRTC too much; the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commitee - they're the regulatory agency that is in charge of telecom) have demonstrated many times that they're not afraid to pound the crap out of companies that try funny stuff. Something as simple as charging too much money for long distance (it's governed by a formula) has led to rebates being given three times that I can remember over the last fifteen or so years.

We have regional local call monopolies, and used to have long distance monopolies as well. The general idea is "you can have a license to print money from your monopoly, but there's no way you're going to use it to gouge." I don't know the formula specifically, but I do know that it includes an assessment of overall profits realised vs. capital investments made.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------