New Delhi, July 2 -- Canada's telecom regulator spent months warning Bell, Rogers and Telus that new charges on their bills looked like the exact fees it had just banned. On June 30, having been told by all three companies in writing that they intended to keep collecting anyway, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission did the next hardest thing available to it under the Telecommunications Act: it opened a formal show-cause proceeding and ordered the carriers to justify the fees in public, on the record, by the end of July.

strip away the friction fees that discourage a customer from switching providers or downgrading a plan they can no longer afford. Bell, Rogers and Telus responded within days by introducing or e...