n- gress. And the Act itself gave the FCC very short time frames in which to create the regulations necessary to implement its many changes. But the opening of local competition did not lead to the same rapid dilu- tion of the dominant providers' market share as resulted after the 1984 breakup of the Bell System. Although CLECs did get a quick jump in some specific mar- kets, they had a difficult time navigating the rocky waters of the Telecom Act's ambiguities and the rapid changes in the effective laws that resulted from a con- tinuing series of legal battles. DSL providers were not the only ones that found the rules changed just as they were beginning to get back on track. The real win- ners were the incumbents, which gained a fig leaf of competition without accepting serious market share losses. The Great Telecom Meltdown The Telecom Act Anticipated CAPs and Resellers Before the Telecom Act, the closest thing to telecom competition in most states was the federally authorized CAP sector. Competitive access providers had pulled fiber in most top markets and were ready to add local dial tone to their service portfolios. Congress was aware of the CAPs when it passed the Telecom Act; they were certainly assumed to be one of the major models by which local competition would be spurred. Indeed, some states had allowed local competi- tion before the Telecom Act. CAPs were functioning as CLECs in New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts in 1995. New York had granted TCG its first local interconnection rights in 1989. Maryland granted MFS Intellinet's appli- cation in 1994, setting an interconnection rate of 6.1 cents per call [1]. Total Service Resale Had Little Value or Margin The other early avenue for competition was resale. New York's Rochester Tele- phone actually proposed this in 1993, under its "Open Market Plan." That plan turned the regulated network provider into a regulated wholesale service pro- vider, initially referred to as R-Net, whereas retail accounts were turned over to an unregulated entity (R-Com) th