a nationwide system, but while the FCC was considering its application, the com- pany broke up eight ways. In its 1984 divestiture, the existing mobile operations were given to the RBOCs, not AT&T. And the RBOCs, not AT&T, became the applicants for cellular system licenses. The FCC recognized that competition would be beneficial for consumers, but it did not want to divide the available frequencies-originally 666 channel pairs in the 800-MHz range that had previously been television channels 71-83-too many ways. So it decided to set up a duopoly system, with two cel- lular licensees in each local area. One would be the so-called wireline, or "B-side," licensee; the other would be the non-wireline or "A-side" licensee. Cel- lular systems were still very speculative; they would require a large investment to build out, and their profit potential was by no means proven. After all, the The Great Telecom Meltdown industry at that point was largely focused on getting beyond the capacity limita- tions of IMTS, not in creating a mass-market product. So the initial licenses were given out in major metropolitan areas. At first the FCC tried to hold com- petitive hearings ("beauty contests") to determine which company would get the A-side license, but this proved to be unwieldy after 30 or SO were handled this way. The remaining A-side licenses were then raffled off among existing RCCs. The B-side licensee was the monopoly local exchange carrier. If there was more than one local exchange carrier doing business within the license's footprint, a lottery would be held to select the winner. This led to some anomalies. The Boston license area had two local exchange carriers within its footprint. NYNEX Corp. had almost all of the phones in Eastern Massachusetts and Rockingham County, New Hampshire. But tiny Naushon Island, off the southern coast of the state a few miles from Cape Cod, had its own little LEC, the Elizabeth Island Telephone Co. Like the privately held island itself, it was owned by the Forbes family. Its few dozen t