information services immediately and to offer electronic publishing SO long as they did SO through separate affiliates U.S.C. §S 271 (b)(1), 73(a), 274(a), 275(a)(1)). As we explained in Chapter 4, concerns about vertical exclusion depend on the assumption that local telephone service remains monopolized. The sunset provi- sions of the 1996 Act reveal the expectation that concerns about vertical exclusion would ultimately be dissipated by the emergence of competition in local telephone The Regulation of Local Telephone Networks service. By the terms of the statute, the restrictions on information services expired in 2000 and 2001. The statute eliminated the prohibition against providing long- distance service and manufacturing equipment for BOCs either facing facilities- based competition or satisfying a fourteen-point competitive checklist establishing that they were providing nondiscriminatory access to their local telephone net- works, although the BOCs seeking to offer those services had to do SO through separate affiliates for an additional three years (47 U.S.C. §$ 271(c)(2), (d) (1), 272(f)(2), 273(a), 274(g)(2), 275(a)(1)). The FCC has ruled that sufficient progress has been made in every state except Alaska and Hawaii to justify permitting BOCs to begin offering long-distance service (FCC 2007b). With the increasing competitive pressure being brought by wireless carriers and broadband providers offering VoIP, it appears to be just a matter of time before vertical exclusion by local telephone companies ceases to be a regulatory concern. In addition, certain services depend on a degree of vertical integration that structural separation and equal access requirements render impossible. Two persis- tent problems raised by the Computer Inquiries illustrate the problem. The advent of digital switching placed computing power in the switch that was capable of support- ing a vast new array of vertical switching services, such as voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, and advance calling. Although independent p