out 144 Kbps by using unswitched ISDN basic-rate loop technology. That is not exhaustive; The Great Telecom Meltdown there are other, lesser-known technologies that sometimes share the "DSL" moniker, as well as ongoing upgrades such as ADSL2+. DSL First Failed as a Video Offering The first deployments of ADSL, in 1993, were trials that predated the consumer Internet market. The key application was video on demand (VOD). ADSL can reach T1 downstream speeds (1.5 Mbps) over loops of up to 12 kilofeet, which, according to industry practice [2], is the maximum length for new copper loop deployments. Video can be compressed to 1.5 Mbps using the MPEG-1 stan- dard, which is sometimes called "VHS quality"; this technology was readily available in 1993. Upstream bandwidth demand was very small, since it was mainly used for "remote control" functions. But other aspects of video on demand were not ready. In one VOD trial, the telephone company was rumored to have set up a roomful of videocasette players, with an operator to fetch the requested tape and patch it into the subscriber's line! Within a short time, ADSL was consigned to the back burner. The Telecom Act Invites Novel Use of Unbundled Loops By the time the Telecom Act passed in 1996, the Internet boom was beginning, and demand for consumer access at higher than dial-up speeds was intensifying. ISDN was the medium of choice for many users, but the incumbent carriers were not entirely happy about it; ISDN was still dial-up, and unless carriers could extract per-minute charges from users, they did not want to deal with the relatively high usage that characterized Internet subscribers. The market was finally ready for ADSL. Although there were some early rollouts of data-oriented ADSL by some of the ILECs, the Telecom Act opened the door to new CLECs. It required the ILECs to make the local loop available as a UNE at rates based on "forward- looking cost." Even before the FCC, the courts, and the states could collectively decide on what these rates would be, entreprene