 McCaw Cellular to AT&T for $11.5 billion. He did not totally exit the wireless business; he soon invested more than a billion dollars in Nextel. But he also entered the wireline business with a company originally called NEXTLINK Communications. Dur- ing the boom years, NEXTLINK built a competitive local network, pulling fiber in numerous cities, especially second-tier ones that competitors such as WorldCom and AT&T had not reached. It became the largest holder of LMDS [8] fixed-microwave licenses from the FCC, enabling it to build high-capacity point-to-point wireless links. In 2000, it merged with ISP Concentric Commu- nications and renamed itself XO Communications. In 2001, the company arranged an $800 million infusion from two major investors, Forstmann-Little and Teléfonos de Mexico, but this was just the beginning of its financial "restructuring" that washed out most of its original The Deuteronomy Networks investors' capital. Those two investors backed out. XO filed Chapter 11 in June 2002 and its primary debt holder, investor Carl Icahn, ended up in control. Icahn had avoided the boom and instead concentrated on buying companies in distress; XO was the kind of bargain he liked. The company resumed public trading on the NASDAQ and, in 2004, acquired bankrupt CLEC Allegiance Telecom. Along the way it missed out on attempted purchases of Global Cross- ing and Britain's Cable and Wireless. Without quite achieving profitability, XO had morphed from a boom tycoon's dream into a bottom-feeding tycoon's vehi- cle for acquiring cheap assets. Undersea, Undersea, Under Beautiful Sea The undersea cable business has long been a rather special part of the world tele- com industry. Requiring massive investments, undersea cables have traditionally been owned by consortiums of major carriers. For example, in 1992, TAT-9, a fiber-optic cable carrying 560 Mbps, was installed between the United States and Europe. It cost $450 million and had 39 owners, including AT&T, British Telecom, Telefonica (Spain), Teleglobe (Canada), 