tion theory is that markets yield efficient outcomes only if every link of the chain of production is sufficiently competitive. As a result, competition policy should focus on identifying the link that is the most concentrated and the most protected by entry barriers and design regulations to increase its competi- tiveness. This implies that regulatory decisions should be guided by their impact on competition in the last mile, which remains the portion of the industry that is the most concentrated and the most protected by barriers to entry. Most access proposals are intended to preserve and foster competition in markets for com- plementary services that depend on the last mile, such as long distance, CPE, or information services, which are the portions of the industry that are already quite competitive and sufficiently unprotected by entry barriers to be likely to remain that way. Although the promotion of competition in complementary services was arguably an appropriate second-order policy goal when the first-order policy goal Networks in Telecommunications of promoting competition in the last mile was likely to prove futile, the growing feasibility of last-mile competition strongly supports refocusing telecommunica- tions policy back on the first-order concerns. Indeed, the ensuing reductions in incentives to invest in alternative transmission technologies could have the unfortunate effect of cementing the existing last-mile oligopoly into place, which would somewhat perversely turn access regulation into the source of, rather than the solution to, market failure. It is conceivable that invest- ment disincentives could be minimized if policy makers engaged in asymmetric regulation that freed new entrants from rate and access regulation while contin- uing to subject the dominant player to such restrictions. If entry is truly feasible, it is not entirely clear whether such regulation would be economically necessary. In addition, administering such a regime would require policy makers to make difficult determinat