 whether it had been destined to become SO when the Bells subsumed the business into an "any-distance" offer was argu- able. But what was beyond argument was that the business was in decline. Armstrong's strategy to "decommoditize" long distance de- pended first on building or buying physical connections to its custom- ers. The very first page of the deal package for the TCI merger that the bankers had prepared said that the merger was part of an initiative "to shift Brazil (AT&T) to a facilities-based, broadband, all-distance consumer strategy that procures direct access to the residential market through ownership of multiple broadband platforms." That objective recognized that AT&T's consumer long-distance business (as distinct from the service it provided) was essentially a vast marketing machine-more than 225 million direct-marketing pieces and I4O million telemarketing calls per year. Few understood that it owned no networks. Its services ran over its parent's national and transoceanic networks and the local networks of various regional tele- phone companies here and abroad. Its principal assets were some 50 million customer relationships and the systems to care for them. The TCI acquisition was part of a plan to give the consumer busi- ness a mosaic of distribution networks over which it could offer any- distance communication services. TCI's systems covered only about a third of the country but would serve as a "proof of concept" to per- suade other cable providers to form joint ventures with AT&T. Where the company didn't own or lease cables, it would use wireless. In be- tween, it would keep trying to lease the Bells' lines at reasonable rates. It's hard to understand why Armstrong abandoned this plan. It could be that he didn't think Zeglis, who had limited operational expe- rience at that point, was up to the job. In fact, in explaining his change of heart to Zeglis, he pointed out that Zeglis would still have ample opportunity to prove his operational mettle by directing AT&T's inter- national, consum