l voice-data connections or long-distance ser- vice. The revenues available from wire-based services, including DSL, have been declining rapidly for several years. 5 Thus the revenues available from telecom services for all wire-based carriers, including the incumbent telephone companies, the CLECs, and the long-distance companies, are declining, and they could decline further as severe price competition con- tinues. The only survivors among these companies are likely to be those that can offer multiple services, including wireless and broadband Inter- net connections. Ultimately, they may have to build fiber very close to or at the subscriber's location to be able to compete with the multiservice cable companies. The Telecom Sector Is Quite Healthy The financial press is still replete with references to the "troubled" telecom sector suggesting that the entire sector collapsed after the bubble burst in 2000 and never recovered. Although such reports may assuage financial market participants who bid up the stock prices of Global Crossing, WorldCom, the various new local entrants, and the telecom equipment manufacturers for little apparent reason, they simply do not fit the facts of the current U.S. telecommunications sector. Competition and a harsh dose of reality have devastated three of its subsectors: the CLECs, the long- distance companies, and the once-large equipment manufacturers. The CLECs and long-distance companies will not recover from these twin assaults because they simply cannot compete with the cable companies, the wireless carriers, and the large incumbent local carriers without their own local networks and a much broader product line. The two large North American equipment companies are also in dire condition because they extended substantial credit to many of these failing carriers, and they have not been able to adapt to the changes in technology that are driving packet-switched broadband services. A simple chart (fig- ure 10-1) demonstrates how the fortunes of equipment producers rose and fell 