ell System attempted to use network economic effects to leverage its initial dominance by refusing to interconnect with independent telephone systems during the early years of competition. Some scholars have suggested that network economic effects played a key role in the Bell System's return dominance after 1907. 14 Some argue that the Bell System reasserted its dominant position by refusing to interconnect with the independents' local tele- phone networks. According to this argument, the network economic effects from connecting with other local customers created demand-side scale economies that gave Bell a decisive advantage. 15 Others focus on the network economics effects pro- vided by Bell System's refusal to allow the independents to interconnect with its long- distance network. Under this argument, key potential long-distance technologies, such as the Pupin coil, enabled the Bell System to provide superior long-distance service, which in turn increased the value of the network by increasing the num- ber of customers any subscriber could reach through the network. These network economic effects, according to this variant of the argument, gave the Bell System a decisive competitive advantage that it could use to drive out the independents simply by refusing to allow them to interconnect with its long distance network. As we discussed in Chapter 4, competition already provides powerful incentives for networks to interconnect, and in the absence of a dominant player, any one firm's refusal to interconnect is unlikely to harm competition. As the FCC reasoned when declining to require wireless telephone networks to interconnect with one another, "In view of the growth of competition in the [wireless] market, we continue to 13 FCC (2005i); New York Times (2007). 14 Lipartito (1989, p. 250 n. 4) calls "[t]he notion that Bell's refusal to interconnect was a potent competitive weapon" an "article of faith in the telephone literature." 15 Lemley (1996); Shelanski and Sidak (2001). 16 Brooks (1975); Langdale (1978); B