istance carriers, including AT&T, MCI-WorldCom, and Sprint. The new law would allow the Bell companies to enter long-distance markets if the long-distance companies and other firms could enter the local-access markets historically dominated by the Bell companies and other incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), such as GTE, United Telephone, Frontier, and Central Tele- phone. The new law not only opened all telecommunications markets to competition but also provided a maze of new requirements for the FCC and state commissions to implement or for the affected parties to contest in court. These provisions substituted for the AT&T consent decree, which was abolished by the 1996 act. "Opening" Local Markets The 1996 Telecommunications Act lays out its prime purpose in its most straightforward provision: "No State or local statute or regulation, or other State or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of pro- hibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service." 11 Had the act stopped there and ended the 1982 AT&T consent decree, much of the legal turmoil that followed (and continues) might have been avoided. Unfortunately, the act contained more than 100 additional pages of detailed instructions to regulators that would unleash years of disputes, legal appeals, and general uncertainty, many of which remain unresolved. These detailed provisions consist largely of prescriptions for opening local telecommunications markets to competition. For example, they require the incumbent local companies, principally the Bell companies, to interconnect with the entrants at any "feasible" point, to lease their "unbundled" network facilities to entrants at some measure of cost to be determined by the regula- tors, and to offer their telecommunications services for resale at wholesale discounts reflecting the avoided costs of retailing the service. A variety of Opening Telecom Markets: The 1996 Telecommunications Act other provisions relate to poles, ducts, emerge