 charge. These functions are now built into equipment the customer buys and the telephone company installs at the customer's location or nearby equipment cabinet. Data communications has become a matter of buying compatible equipment and services. In a few short years, the Internet has taken hold across business and consumer or residential services like noth- ing in the past. Along with that change has come tough times for investors and employees, and opportunities for users to avail them- selves of new capabilities. Now, and for the foreseeable future it's "voice, data, and video." CONSOLIDATION REDUX From approximately 1999 through the end of 2002, telecom employ- ees and executives saw option packages worth tens of millions of dollars, and their jobs, evaporate. Some of the most prestigious com- panies in the business were thrown into turmoil. Lucent Technolo- gies, parent of Bell Labs, shrunk its global workforce from 153,000 to 35,000. The nation's top telecom clusters in New Jersey, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Washington suffered as well. High- flying startups initially flush with venture capital ran out of money and simply ceased operations or declared bankruptcy. In early 2003, a deeply divided Federal Communications Commis- sion considered and left in place rules passed in the wake of the 1996 Telecom Legislation that were intended to foster local telephone competition. Seven original RBOCs had consolidated into four. Ameritech and Pacific Telesis became children of SBC. Bell Atlantic merged with Nynex. GTE, once independent, that is, not part of the original AT&T, or a Regional Bell, merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon. Ostensibly, this action was to free the Bells SO they could foster growth in broadband services. Freeing the Bells ideally would have allowed them to stop making their network elements available to resellers, allow them to compete in the long distance market as well as offer Internet services, the new name for the old "data" services. Part of the rationalization for