tors, concerned by World- Com's aggressive plans, felt that the intended company looked too much like a monopoly. They forced the divestiture of MCI's internet company to Cable & Wireless and rejected the proposed merger with Sprint because of fears that they would control 80 percent of the long-distance market. This decision was made while long-distance revenues were plummeting due to the influence of such disruptive technologies as multichannel opti- cal transport and IP. The result is two badly weakened companies that have not yet recovered-and may not. Ironically, they could now be prime acquisition targets for the ILECs. (Although, at the time of this writing, competitors are calling for the dismemberment of MCI over arguments that their reentry into the market would give them an unfair competitive advantage, particularly in light of their unethical behavior). Another example is AT&T itself. There was a huge expectation that AT&T would be a big winner in the local broadband access game follow- ing its acquisitions of cable properties for its plans to deliver high-speed Internet and interactive services. Many analysts expected a market cross-invasion between the ILECs and cable providers, but it has only Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. The Byzantine World of Telecom Regulation The Byzantine World of Telecom Regulation just begun to happen. Cable providers concentrated on adding Internet service and additional channels; telephone companies concentrated on penetrating the long-distance market. Furthermore, when talk of open access and loop unbundling began to be targeted at the cable industry in 2000, AT&T's hopes of a competitive advantage through cable ownership were dashed; they sold their cable properties to Comcast. There were also expectations that ILECs would work hard to pene- trate each other's markets, but this ne