 about four million subscribers, for almost $11 billion. (Continental's systems in US West territory, such as its Minneapo- lis, system, had to be sold off as part of the deal. Charter Communications, for instance, paid almost $2,100 per subscriber for Minneapolis.) Industry consoli- dation included many smaller acquisitions, usually at much lower per-subscriber prices; rural systems with fewer than 10,000 lines typically sold for $1,000 to 1,500 per line [16]. Given Continental's already HFC-rich network, it seemed likely that US West would be interested in using the network to provide competitive tele- phone service. Indeed this did happen; MediaOne became a major CLEC, using TDM digital cable telephony systems from Tellabs and Arris. Cox and others also added telephony to some of their cable systems, though rollouts were far from universal. In 1998, AT&T made a deal worth approximately $48 million to acquire TCI, more than $3,000 per subscriber. This propelled the telephone giant to first place in the cable business but left it with a huge job to do because TCI's network was largely viewed as a "fixer-upper." John Malone was left in charge of a separate programming unit, Liberty Media, which was eventually spun off. In 1999, US West put MediaOne up for sale. Com- cast's offer was followed by AT&T's offer of $23 million, worth $4,632 per subscriber. This was the height of the cable industry's irrational exuberance phase. AT&T Broadband had cemented its leadership in size, but the par- ent company's debt headache was growing worse. How could even triple play cover such acquisition costs? In 1996, the average cable system sold for $2,115 per subscriber; AT&T helped propel that to $3,819 in early 1999. The average acquisition's cash flow multiple went from 11.4 to 16.3 in that time [17]. In 2002, AT&T sold its cable unit, which by then had about 22 million subscribers, to Comcast, in a deal worth about $72 billion, under $3,300 per subscriber. AT&T had lost tens of millions of dollars in its foray into cable. Comc