Japanese cell phone companies did something similar for many years, they all offered two-year contracts with a cancellation fee of around $100, and you could only cancel in the last month before it auto-renewed. The government finally passed new regulation to stop this a few years ago.

The extra insult was they called it a "discount package" (50% off!), but it was already baked into all the advertised prices. In other words you pay double the listed price if you don't take the lock-in.