e of the limitations im- posed by voice service pricing in a monopoly market dominated by incumbents. Many are betting voice-over IP (VOIP) will be at the roots of the next major wave of change in the industry. Some maintain that this could be the next utopian storm. And it may come at faster speed than the classical telephone world is used to enjoying. Remember the game you learned as a child whereby a series of dots were placed on paper in a matrix form and then you and another player started connecting two dots at a time with a single mark? The objective of the game was to reach a point where the last line drawn created a box into which PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS the player could put their initial and claim ownership. The end of the game came when all boxes had been claimed, and the winner was the player who had acquired the most boxes. In the VOIP game, there's a lot of dots out there now, including laptop personal computers (PCs) with a microphone and speaker, to say nothing of the number of desktops with circuitry and plugs, even microphones and speakers thrown away or languishing in a desk drawer. Microsoft started shipping operating system (OS) software with QOS capabilities in 2000. The next generation OS includes what they called a real-time communications client. PC technology is pervasive or becoming that way in enterprise and consumer market places. Just connecting these dots alone could make a devastating impact on ILEC voice service business. Sooner or later, the owner of a PC will discover that many or most of the other people they talk to on the telephone can be reached by an alternate route through their PC and Internet access and wonder what else they could buy with the $30 or $40 they spend for local and long distance telephone service. Local area network (LAN) technology and products have been as much a business necessity as telephone products and services for many years. Their utility started out as a way to share printers and later files. Somewhere alo