om Regulation The Byzantine World of Telecom Regulation The broadband deployment effort involves infrastructure; shortly after the service announcement, ILECs issue RFPs and RFQs for DSLAMs, optical extension hardware, DSL modems, and begin to jockey for content alliances since DSL provides the necessary bandwidth for television signal delivery in addition to voice and high-speed data. Cus- tomers, meanwhile, excited by the prospect of higher-speed access and all that it will bring them in the way of enhanced capability, buy upgraded PCs and broadband service packages. Hardware manufactur- ers and service providers applaud the evolution because they know that the typical broadband user generates 13 times the traffic volume that a dial-up user generates, and while service providers rarely charge by the transported megabyte, the increased traffic volume requires capability upgrades to the network-CAPEX, in other words. Meanwhile, software manufacturers, mobile appliance makers, and content owners scramble to develop products for wireline and wireless broadband delivery. Upgrades occur; innovation happens; prices come down. Cable and wireless players march along with their own parallel efforts and soon this great, dynamic money engine known as the telecom industry starts to turn again, slowly at first but building rapidly as it feeds on its own self-generated fuel. And that is the ultimate end state- a self-perpetuating industry that evolves and changes in concert with market demand, sustained by a forward-thinking, reasonable regulatory environment. What this boils down to is Michael Powell's ultimate goal: to force the industry at large to become facilities-based. The fact is that the local loop is a natural monopoly-there's no getting around that. The UNE rules are basically unnatural and simply don't work as well as they were envi- sioned. Want to compete with the incumbent service providers? Use a dif- ferent technology, like cable, or broadband wireless. Clearly this strategy is working in the cable industry's