 would no doubt have failed eventually because they could not differentiate them- selves from the incumbents. Now the courts have condemned the UNE platform as well, eliminating even the lure of regulatory arbitrage. As it turned out, the regulatory strategy of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and of the state regulators to promote entry into local fixed-wire services was not only wasteful but unnecessary. Meaningful mass- market competition did not develop through unbundled network elements or their platform. For the most part, these policies simply transferred bil- lions of dollars from incumbent telephone companies to fund marketing campaigns required to sell the same service under a different name. Instead, competition has developed in ways totally unanticipated by regulators, namely through unregulated wireless providers and cable broadband plat- forms. Fortunately, federal and state regulators were denied the right to reg- ulate wireless rates and services, and cable television regulation was scaled back considerably in 1996. As a result, the wireless sector began to launch an unregulated competitive rate war and to offer national calling plans as soon as it could consolidate into six national players after new frequencies were auctioned in 1995-96. At about the same time, cable operators began A Look Back and a Look Forward to expand their capabilities to meet satellite competition and were thus poised to be early movers in the broadband race. The result has been a dra- matic shift of telecom revenues from traditional long-distance carriers and, to a lesser extent, incumbent local companies to wireless carriers and cable operators. When the regulators could no longer keep the Bell companies out of long distance after seven years of Section 271 proceedings under the 1996 act, the Bell companies added further to the assault on long-distance com- pany revenues. And when unregulated voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services began to appear, cable television operators were forced to offer voice se