The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that Canada's big telcos are trapped in a Catch-22: Price cuts are keeping Ottawa and new customers happy, but hurt their chances of earning back the billions of dollars they spent on spectrum. The Globe's Tim Kiladze writes that at a time when the share prices of BCE, Rogers and Telus are all struggling, the weaker return on investment only makes it harder to resuscitate their stocks. Since the start of the year, the shares of BCE and Rogers are down more than 14 per cent, while Telus is down 8 per cent. In that period, the S&P/TSX Composite Index has risen 9.1 per cent. With their share prices suffering, the telcos have started major restructurings. In February, BCE said it would lay off 9 per cent of its work force, and last summer Telus said it would lay off 4,000 people. Canada's three largest telecom providers have spent heavily on new infrastructure to support faster Internet speeds and better service for cellphone data. While costly, the hope was that customers would ultimately pay more for better service, and higher revenues could be used to pay down the debt taken on to finance these investments. Lately, however, they have been locked in a price war.