A lot of people complain about the arrogance of IT people and our general failure to understand either the customer or the business. So what happens when IT is the business? or, at least, where IT has a clear role on the customer service delivery side?

Well it depends first on the extent to which the company feels competitive pressure and second on who's in charge in IT.

Canada is a land of monopolies with almost everything ultimately owned by the same people and lots of heavily protected, and deeply entrenched, monopolies frozen in place by inertia and interlocking government and financial processes.

Bell Canada, for example, dominates consumer telecommunications services in central Canada - and really should have a single upward waving finger as its corporate logo. No matter what you want from them, there's a procedure, an extra charge, weeks of delay, and at least an hour of hold time before they allow you to place a service order.

Telus, formerly Alberta Government Telephones, has a similar functional monopoly in Alberta and B.C. Everything is now web or IVR based - and their web site materials, although I believe served from Sun gear, pretty much require you to have I.E.

Indeed "require" in the legal sense of judicial compulsion is one of their favourite words - for example they "require" you to give them your legal land description before they'll provide local service.

On the other hand their website, although heavy handed in terms of customer imposition and general arrogance, doesn't provide simple factual information like what a local line costs. The answer turns out to be $25.16 per month - oh, plus $4.95 to enrol in a long distance plan, another $5.00 for the first 100 minutes of long distance service, $4.95 for caller ID, and $7.95 for call forwarding; i.e. about $48.01 per month for basic service.

In other circumstances that's called "monopoly rent," but this is a monopoly rant so I need to mention that the information-free nature of their website with respect to basics like pricing forces you onto their IVR system. It's wonderful, the computer delivered voice even manages to sound irritated; as if, you know, the CPU had been in sleep mode when you dared interrupt.