nto long-distance services as an "inducement" to open their networks cost consumers an estimated 7 per- cent more in long-distance rates in the first four years under the act and a declining percentage between 2000 and 2004 as the Bell companies were slowly being allowed to offer long-distance services from within their oper- ating territories. Assuming that the total residential long-distance market in 1996-2000 was about $50 billion, this translates into a transfer from con- sumers to the failing long-distance carriers of approximately $3.5 billion a year and the loss of another $90 million a year in consumer surplus from long-distance minutes. 24 After 2000, this cost fell to perhaps $1 billion a year. Over the entire eight-year period, the total consumer cost of pro- moting local competition through blocking Bell company entry has been about $20 billion.25 As noted in chapter 4, the benefits of this policy from enhanced local competition were substantially less. Effect on Long-Distance Company Equities The aggressive wireless-wireline competition developed just when the equity prices of long-distance companies began tumbling. An equity price index for the two largest long-distance carriers other than AT&T (see fig- ure 6-3) shows a sharp rise between 1997 and 2000 and an equally sharp decline thereafter. (AT&T is excluded because it had become a large cable company with the acquisitions of TCI and MediaOne.) Surprisingly, the long-distance equities continued to rise after AT&T Wireless introduced its "One-Rate" plan in 1998. The wireless stocks also began rising briskly at this time as the heated competition and decline in roaming revenues caused by the nationwide plans reverberated through income statements. In late 1999, two months before the first Bell company application for long-distance entry was approved under Section 271 of the new act, long- distance companies found their stock values slipping. Wireless equities did not begin their slide for another five months. Nor did they plunge into oblivion, as 