lear that the sector is settling down into a competitive struggle among three alternative communications platforms-namely, those of the wireless carriers, the large traditional Bell telephone companies, and the cable tele- vision companies. The new high-speed Internet services are driving tech- nology and investment, and the role of voice communications has been dramatically reduced. Traditional voice telephony is migrating to the Internet along with most other services. In this world, the new small-scale entrants attracted into the sector by the 1996 law are failing rapidly. Even the traditional long-distance companies will not be able to survive as inde- pendent entities because the prices they can command have declined SO rapidly that they have not been able to cover the costs of the very large in- vestments they made in the 1990s. As this book goes to press, the two largest long-distance carriers (AT&T and MCI) are in the process of being swallowed by the two largest Bell companies (Verizon and SBC). Regulation works very poorly in a market with rapidly changing tech- nology and strong rivalry among a changing group of large players. As a result, my book recommends a major deregulation of telecommunications SO that market forces can drive the necessary investments. And I argue that, to the extent Congress wishes to continue the myriad subsidy pro- grams described as "universal service" policy, it should pay for these poli- cies from general revenues, not from taxes on still-evolving telecommuni- cations services. Acknowledgments or numerous comments and suggestions, thanks go to James Alleman, Jerry Ellig, Thomas Hazlett, Eli Noam, J. Gregory Sidak, Hal Singer, and Leonard Waverman. I would also like to thank Simone Berkowitz, Jesse Gurman, and Shen Wu for research assistance. The manuscript was edited by Vicky Macintyre and fact checked by Stephen Robblee. The pages were proofed and indexed by, respectively, Inge Lockwood and Sherry Smith. Introduction en years ago, most of the world's telecommunications com