In addition to Rural Redlining, it seems telcos may be divesting themselves of less profitable customers another way:

While it may not be readily apparent to professionals and upper income consumers, rates have increased many times over for low volume users, particularly seniors, despite the apparent reduction in prices experienced by heavy-volume telephony consumers. The vast majority of American telephony customers are low-to-middle volume users and it is they who have borne the brunt of price and rate increases since the AT&T/SBC and MCI/Verizon mergers.

AT&T and MCI (Verizon) Are Harvesting Customers. TeleTruth, 6 Feb 2007

Such price hikes could make such customers profitable, or get rid of them when they don’t want to pay the increased rates.

-jsq