I've long held the thought that Telus' impetus for bringing ADSL high speed to my tiny little island was not motivated by wanting to provide high speed service, but to get their foot in the door with VoIP. Public opinion of Telus is quite low, and they must know that people will jump ship when they get the chance. Heck, that's what I did. I went from having 3 phone lines and one dial-up account with them, to 1 phone line (with long distance) and no Internet accounts. This reduces my yearly Telus expenses by about $900, a drop in the bucket to them, but multiply that by X number of disatisfied customers… it adds up!

The CRTC made a recent ruling that the big Canadian telcos are not happy about. They ruled that:

1. Established companies like Telus and Bell Canada would not be allowed to sell VoIP below cost;
2. Established companies could not try to win back customers who moved to other service providers, such as internet companies, for a year after they left. 

You can read more in this article from CBC.ca. 

When it comes to the big phone companies, we need the CRTC to defend our interests as consumers. I for one hope this ruling sticks.