Actually you can achieve a similar result form the consumer angle without the tie in. Why not separate the lease of the equipment from the service. you could have a 2 year lease and a service agreement with no ties. If you take the iphone you pay $200 up front and probably $25 per month for 2 years out of the $70 a month contract. If you are careful about your equipment it will last way more than 2 years but you never get the discount. We should prohibit "natural monopolies" from extending their monopolies by using their market position oh wait this is already prohibited why are we not prosecuting?

Actually this is going to be interesting Virgin-Media is a European company even if the English sometimes conveniently forget it, and the European Parliament is pushing to have Internet access recognized as an essential service like the phone.

I can see a law suit coming.

I thought Microsoft was in Washington state.

You may want to keep up with the stats IE is fast becoming irrelevant for some segment of the Web and is down to 67% globally.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0