 providers was solved. Since 1984 the telecommunications marketplace has continued to evolve, sometimes in strange and unpredictable ways. Harold Greene oversaw the remarkable transformation of the industry until his death in January of 2000. Over time, the seven RBOCs slowly accreted to a smaller number as SBC, Pacific Bell, and Ameritech joined forces, suck- ing SNET into their midst in the process; NYNEX and Bell Atlantic danced around each other until they became Verizon, pulling GTE into the fray; and Qwest acquired USWest. Only Bellsouth remains as a standalone suitor from earlier days, and none of them are called RBOCs anymore-they're incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs). A host of new players emerged from the proverbial woodwork including bypassers, which became competitive access providers (CAPs), which in turn became competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). Service, now the favored watchword, has given rise to DLECs, BLECs, ISPs, ASPs, and LSPs. Old-timers remember when the world was fine with just BSPs. (Sorry, inside joke.) In 1996 the FCC released the Communications Act of 1996, designed to revamp the Communications Act of 1934 and make it friendlier to the services carried by network providers today. It also was Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Telephony Telephony designed to address the requests by ILECs to become long-distance providers through a 14-point checklist that they were required to com- plete before being considered for entry into the long-distance market. None of them ever complied totally with the demands, and as we will see in the regulatory chapter, significant changes have occurred since 1996. Overall, the market continues to liberalize. Western Electric has ceased to exist and Lucent has taken its place. The Internet has become the next great technology and service frontier, and both ex