The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that until last week, the country's big telcos all obeyed the same commandment: Thou shalt own thine infrastructure. The Globe's Andrew Willis writes that in every other industrial country, phone companies raised money to build networks and pay down debt by selling off cell towers, fibre networks and data centres. Canada's Big Three -- Rogers, BCE, Telus -- stubbornly held on to their hardware. Last Thursday, Rogers broke the commandment; and where Rogers dared to venture, analysts say Bell and Telus will soon follow. The country's largest cellphone provider announced plans to raise $7-billion by selling a minority share of its wireless backhaul operations (the links between its cell towers and its core network) to an unnamed asset manager. Rogers will use the money to pay down debt taken on in last year's $20-billion purchase of Shaw. Globally, Rogers is late to the game. U.S., Asian and European phone companies long ago converted to the gospel of selling stakes in hardware to build balance sheets. In a report, analyst Maher Yaghi at Scotiabank said, "We have been very vocal about the need for Canadian telcos to shed assets." A flood of asset sales now seems inevitable.