s When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was enacted, the United States Congress felt that it was not economically feasible for rivals of the RBOCs to build all their own local facilities. It therefore mandated that incumbents such as the then SBC (now AT&T, Inc.) make their local networks available at replacement cost plus a reason- able profit to competitors such as the former MCI (now part of Verizon) at Unbundled Competition, Industry Structures, and Regulations Network Element (UNE) rates. UNE refers to the services and switching equipment that belong to individual local telephone companies that are leased to competitors. These assets included the following: The local copper loop from the incumbent's equipment to the customer High-speed lines between the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) switch and the incumbent's central office RBOC local central office switch ports for connections to local loops Operator services Signaling services to link central offices to systems, including billing Many CLECs including MCI (now part of Verizon) and Sprint leased entire plat- forms of incumbents' facilities at a discounted rate to offer service without building their own infrastructure. These platforms are referred to as Unbundled Network Ele- ment Platform (UNE-P). Some competitors used this strategy primarily for residential service; others built their whole business around the resale of UNE-P. Other competi- tors built their own facilities in areas where they had concentrations of business cus- tomers and used an incumbent's entire platforms (UNE-P) in other areas. Court Rulings on Access to an Incumbent's Equipment and Fiber In a March 2004 ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Colum- bia struck down state authority to set discounts for competitors to connect to an incum- bent's facilities, such as central office switch ports, local loops, and high-capacity T1 (1.54Mbps) and T3 (44Mbps) links. The circuit court's ruling ended most of the deep discounts available to competi- tors in m