Of course, in a normal competitive market, these sorts of things are perfectly natural. Even in a communications market where competition has had a chance to become established, I think that the winback rules enhance competition. The trouble is that when you're dealing with a market that has a 100% telephone company monopoly, a monopoly that's been there for 100 years, what happens is that when a new entrant goes into that new market it costs them maybe $300 to acquire a subscriber--a common number--because they have to roll out a truck, install equipment, do advertising, and what have you. When they call that customer up and give them $400 to come back, and that happens to your second, third, and fourth customer, and maybe you lose two out of three of those people, now it's costing them maybe $1,000 to acquire a customer. The project never breaks even. You always lose money, and at some point you give up.
That's what monopolies will do to try to hang on to a monopoly in a market. That's why the CRTC has had these winback rules for cable television and the long distance market, and they've worked. Once the competition gets established, you get rid of the rules, as they did for the long distance market, and customers benefit.