FTTC could theoretically provide adequate speed to provide near-fiber-like services, such as video on demand. But a real impact of the rule would be to make it far easier for ILECs to cut off CLEC access to unbundled loops. Verizon and SBC had been promising some degree of FTTH buildouts if they were not required to unbundle; BellSouth wanted, and got, the same benefits without ponying up the same cash. (It should come as no surprise that BellSouth had Powell's ear. His closest advisor, until her November, 2004, departure from the FCC 's The Great Telecom Meltdown Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, was Jane Mago, wife of Robert Blau, BellSouth's Vice President for regulatory affairs.) BellSouth then filed a petition for forbearance of the FCC's Computer II rules and their entire Title II common carrier obligation per se for all "broadband" access services. This was another approach to the same goal that Powell had proposed, but not acted on, three years earlier. A forbearance petition, unlike a rulemaking, takes effect automatically if the FCC doesn't dismiss it within a year. The BellSouth proposal would remove the ILEC's obligation to provide even the same raw bandwidth to ISPs that they provide to their own ISP offering (the Computer II obligation), and their obligation to make raw telecommunications service available to ISPs on request at just and reasonable rates (common carriage). With the erosion of loop unbundling taking away the CLEC's ability to service ISPs, the future prospects of independent ISPs became as seriously impaired as that of the CLECs. While dial-up remained available, even that came under more attack, as ILECs were succeeding in many cases in putting a prohibition on Virtual NXX operation into their interconnection agreements. Thus even low-speed dial-up ISP competition would only be available in major cities, not the bulk of the "red state" countryside. Would a tight ILEC/cable duopoly on ISP service encourage investment? With four more years of the Bush administration ahe