said by justsomeguy:said by Abattoir:said by justsomeguy:Would you like a government body telling you that you cant raise your prices and the reason being because they received complaints that nobody wanted to pay more?
In an unregulated, free market economy, of course not. This is not one of those situations. Bell has a natural monopoly over its competitors, and in our form of capitalism we do not like monopolies. Therefore, if they want to raise their rates, they must demonstrate that the proposed rates are justified for the proposed services.
People are seeing this as a giant rollback of service while jacking up prices, simultaneously reinforcing their monopolistic position. Of course people complain because their bills are going up. They still have to listen to citizens when they claim that Bell hasn't made its case sufficiently well.
There is competition though, there is Rogers, Cogeco, Primus to name a few.
Maybe you are forgetting that these Bell Wholesalers fought the CRTC tooth and nail to be able to have wholesale access to Bell's copper network, they have to live with the consequences of this action. Typically when you force your way into getting access to something you dont own you have to put up with certain problems and what we are seeing is some of those problems. Nobody forced these companies to enter into this agreement with Bell! See Primus for an example of a company that took a different path.
Primus started in Canada with the benefit of a big bankroll from their American parent (even though Primus Canada is 'technically' a Canadian company). They could afford to take a different approach.
