Listening to this piece on NPR today I was reminded of the 90's, and all the crazy abusive things phone companies did then. Before cellular really hit it big, long-distance calling was contracted separately from but billed through your local phone company. There was a huge competition between long-distance companies. They would not only call you constantly trying to get you to switch, but nefarious activities were common. Once a year at least I'd open up my phone bill and discover I'd been switched to a new long-distance company without my authorization (they called it "slamming" back then), usually with some terrible rate or unintuitive "evenings and weekends" hours, so that what should have been a $20 charge for a few calls was now $50. It was almost impossible to prove you didn't authorize the change, and since the billing went through another company disputing the charges was incredibly difficult. That plus hard to read bills, fishy and/or vaguely labeled charges, and some surprise or another nearly every single month.
Today's news just reminded me that even if it's twenty years later and there's been a huge transition from landline to cellular, in the background nothing has really changed.