I'd rather see a mail order company use it for a few years, then assign its rights to another company, say an advertising agency. It's always better to keep the number in use to someone's actual benefit. If, in the meantime, the speculator paid for the right to keep that number off the market, that would be just fine. The more money the speculator is forced to pay for that right, the more likely he'll sell the number to someone actually willing to use it for a good purpose. Proliferation of the toll-free numbering space is analogous to suburban sprawl.
Telecom is a trillion dollar business worlwide.
Such speculating isn't an inherent part of the business. It simply exists because there is no free market in numbering space. Please dust off your economics text books. Speculators exploit flaws in markets when they aren't quite free. Speculators have found always found profit because a pure free market has never existed.