any (as an example), you need 1 million customers. A startup company is ill pre- pared to handle this volume from an operations support system (OSS) standpoint. New players need to focus on broadband services where there are more opportunities for revenues and margins and more sup- pliers for the raw material, namely fiber. The CLECs, DLECs, and BLECs took an overcapitalization approach of building much larger networks and purchasing more equipment than would have been justified by primary market research on the revenue- generation potential. Many CLECs, DLECs, and BLECs networks only had 2 to 4 percent utilization. Their architectures were not innovative and they used decade(s)-old approaches, methodologies, and designs. New players need to develop creative, lean architectures that employ Chapter 4 much less equipment (capital), and the players need to keep their inventory of capacity significantly lower than the 96 to 98 percent over- built levels that were common in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The venture capitalists tend to focus only on the production side of the equation, without appropriately funding the consumption side of the equation. Venture capitalists like to fund new technology development, but they have also not funded to an optimized macroeconomic level new carriers and providers that can develop markets for the new products that the venture capitalists have (over)funded on the technology side. If venture capitalists want to secure a return on their technology investments, they also need to diversify their portfolios and fund the technology usage industry. As a guideline, for every $2 invested in the technology production side, they should invest $1 in the technology consumption side. If some point of equilibrium in the funding discipline is not reached, the investments of the technology creation side will not provide returns. Naturally, these venture capitalists need to find the right startup companies to fund. As a guideline, if a carrier promises 90 percent gross margins, 30 percent market 