olding that the emergence oflast-mile alternatives justified waiv- ing the Modification of Final Judgment's line of business restriction on information services 112 as well as the catch-all restriction on untariffed services. 113 Controversies over the remaining line of business restrictions continued until the Modification of Final Judgment was superseded by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Justice Department's and the FCC's recent approvals of the Verizon-MCI and SBC-AT&T acquisitions further attests to the extent to which control of the local loop has ceased to be a justification for imposing platform access. Indeed, as recently as 1997, a merger between a long distance company and one of the local telephone companies that used to make up the Bell System was regarded as "unthinkable" (Hundt 1997). But the FCC approved these two mergers, disposing of requests for platform access in a few brief paragraphs finding that the level of competition and the existence of excess capacity were sufficient to guard against anticompetitive harms (FCC 2005g, 2005h). Indeed, the judicial decision evaluating the acquisitions under the antitrust laws did not even mention platform access. The experience implementing the platform access provisions of the Modifi- cation of Final Judgment provides an eloquent demonstration of how difficult administering platform access can be. The court overseeing the decree was bom- barded with complaints charging the local telephone companies with failing to live up to their equal access obligations. The technological dynamism of the telecom- munications industry forced the court to confront hundreds of requests to waive the line-of-business restrictions.116 These requests often took from three to four 112 United States V. W. Elec. Co., 993 F.2d 1572, 1578-80 (D.C. Cir. 1993). 113 W. Elec. Co., 673 F. Supp. at 599. 114 Huber et al. (1999). 115 See United States V. SBC Commc'ns, Inc., 489 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2007). 116 Kellogg et al. (1992); Kellogg et al. (1995). Antitrust as Applied to N