The Great Telecom Meltdown Unlike Level 3, Wiltel, and Qwest, Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN) did not create a nationwide fiber-optic network. Instead, it created a competitive access provider, whose mission was to provide fiber-optic local loops in metro- politan areas. Unlike earlier providers that rationed out bits per second from their multixors, MFN was happy to provide dark fiber: Many of its buried pipes had 288 strands, more than enough to go around. Metromedia did not actually start the company; it was founded in 1993 as National Fiber Network by Ste- phen Garofalo, an electrical contractor, but Metromedia bought a controlling interest in 1997. This deal put Metromedia back into the telecom business, right when the boom was in full swing and local telephone competition was exciting investors. In 1999, Verizon (then still called Bell Atlantic) purchased a 20% interest in the company in a deal worth slightly more than $2 billion. The problem with MFN was that the customers were not there. Trenching hundreds of miles of city streets was expensive. The ILECs were already there, of course; although they did not willingly provide dark fiber, they were required to provide "spare" dark fiber capacity to CLECs at prices based on the FCC's Total Element Long Run Incremental Cost (TELRIC) methodology, an incremental cost basis that undercut the CAPs. This was generally good for competition and for the CLECs' customers, but it was no help to the CAPs that had in many cases followed each other trenching the same major city streets. MFN filed for bankruptcy in May 2002. It emerged over a year later as AboveNe Inc., taking the name of an ISP that it had acquired earlier. As with many other bankrupt companies, it emerged with new shares and new capitalization but with a market capitalization only a fraction of its predecessors' peak value. XO Communications Recycles Cellular Profits Craig McCaw took his family's wireless business and grew it into one of the country's largest cellular telephone operators. In 1994, he sold