ial access applications such as ISP access and WATS-style long distance lines from becoming EELs. CLECs could, however, provide combined voice and data serv- ices across them; the savings compared with special access sometimes made the voice service virtually "free" to the end user. A number of CLECs pursued the EEL avenue in the 2000s to considerable success. The ISP Dial-In Business and CLECs: A Match Made in Heaven The market sector in which CLECs were most successful was, without a doubt, the provision of incoming dial-in capacity to Internet service providers. The Telecom Act was passed during the steepest part of the Internet boom. Consum- ers were buying modems by the millions. ISPs were hard-pressed to keep up with demand. And ILECs were particularly hard-pressed to keep up with demand for the ISDN PRI lines that worked best with remote access servers, the CLECs Winning Strategies Are Met by Rule Changes systems that combined high-capacity digital line interfaces, modems, and rout- ers. For some years, ILECs had, after all, been growing only modestly faster than the population. They had been accustomed to upgrading their network capacity based on lengthy (up to five-year) forecasting intervals, and their PRI rollouts had been leisurely at best. Suddenly, they were being asked for PRIs by the dozen. And they were not always in the most populous places; ISPs wanted dial-in number with the largest number of possible users in their local calling area. That did not always line up with where the ILEC had the most capacity; it might be a suburban area local to a large urban area as well as other suburbs. Some of the ILECs reacted to the ISP boom by trying to stamp it out. Bell Atlantic submitted an ex parte white paper to the FCC calling for the imposi- tion of switched access charges on ISP-bound calls (the so-called modem tax). Its paper cited the cost of adding hundreds or thousands of lines of capacity to some of its oldest analog central offices, whose local calling areas happened to be particularly desirab