If you would indulge me, let me read to you what Bell said about the winback rules in the cable market. This is a statement they made on January 28, 2005, in a publication called Canadian Communications Reports, a statement by the director of regulatory matters supporting the winback rules in the cable market.
They said:
You invest a lot of money in a building to put a facility in there, to market to the building, and so on. When you make that investment, you have to count on a certain penetration just to break even, he notes. It really doesn't matter if it's a TV service or anything else. When you're selling to a building, you have to count on a certain penetration level just to break even. If you open a donut store or something in the lobby, you have to assume a certain volume of sales to make your presence worthwhile. And if the donut store next door came along and suddenly said, “Don't buy donuts from him, I'll give them to you for half price”, you have no opportunity then to make a business. So are you going to go into another building and lose money there too? The cable company can chase you all over town until you run out of money. (The revised winback rule) is another measure that the commission has put in place to give competition an opportunity to get established...It's only a 90-day opportunity to prove to customers that you have the ability to provide the service they want.
So that's Bell—big company, big satellites already launched—and they felt they needed that protection just to get established, and they still have that protection today.
I agree with you, sir, that protectionism is something that normally makes us all question whether the regulator is doing the right thing. But this formula of having winback rules in place has worked. I'm concerned that we're going to come to some small market five years from now that won't have phone service, because of the elimination of these rules.