 During 1992 and 1993, the FCC lifted the structural separation requirements as soon as the major local telephone companies filed plans detailing how they would comply with ONA (see cases cited in FCC 1995c, n. 22). A series of judicial chal- lenges invalidated the FCC's actions, which left the regulatory regime advanced in the third Computer Inquiry in limbo.¹ 19 Unbundling requirements also formed one of the key provisions of the Telecom- munications Act of 1996. Specifically, the Act required that all carriers providing local telephone service as of the date of the statute's enactment provide any request- ing carrier with access to all of their network elements on an unbundled basis at any technically feasible point. The statute restricted this so-called unbundled network element (UNE) access provision to situations in which access to proprietary net- work elements was "necessary" and "the failure to provide access to such network elements would impair the ability of the telecommunications carrier seeking access to provide the services that it seeks to offer" (47 U.S.C. § (d)(2)). The FCC quickly implemented this provision, applying the unbundled access requirement to a wide range of network elements required for providing both local telephone and broadband services (FCC 1996c, 1998b, 1998f, 1999c, 1999e, 1999g, 2000c, 2001e). After a protracted series of judicial setbacks, 20 the FCC largely 19 The Ninth Circuit initially overturned the Computer III regime as arbitrary and capricious on the ground that the FCC had not adequately justified its decision to rely on nonstructural safeguards (California I, 905 F.2d at 1230-39). On remand, the FCC attempted to respond to the Ninth Circuit's concerns by strengthening ONA by imposing mandatory price cap regulation on the BOCs and establishing new cost accounting rules that would make anticompetitive activity easier to detect (FCC 1991b). At the same time, the FCC also simultaneously weakened ONA somewhat by shifting from a "fundamental unbundling" approach, in which 