ectly to the RAS before local number portability would have made this easy, but this network capability was not made generally available to CLECs elsewhere. Bell Atlantic Reply Comments in FCC docket 96-98, at 20. Also see hearing transcript on HR4445 before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer The Great Telecom Meltdown Protection, June 22, 2000, http://www.nrri.ohio-state.edu/recipcomp/hearings%20on6 20hr%204445.pdf. The legal definition of "communications" is far more expansive than that of "telecommu- nications." [9] Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Energy docket 97-116-c. Federal Communications Commission, "Local Telephone Competition: Status as of December 31, 2003," June 2000. [11] United States Telecom Assoc. V. FCC, 290 F. 3d 415, 426-27 (D.C. Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 123 S Ct. 1571 (2003). United States Telecom Assoc. V. FCC, 359 F. 3d 554 (D.C. Cir 2004). For example, USTA II noted that the only reason stated by the FCC for maintaining UNE-P was because of the high cost of hot cuts. The record was quite a bit more expan- sive. Also see Goldstein, F., and J. Marashlian, "USTA V. FCC: A Decision Ripe for the Supremes," ISP Planet, March 25, 2004, isp-planet.com/perspectives/2004/usta_ v_fcc.html. Precisely what the ILECs offered cannot be stated, because their offers, while made to thousands of CLECs, were technically under nondisclosure. Focusing on the Bottom Line The great telecom meltdown did not occur because of any one new law or rule, any one new technology, or any one company's actions. It was the result of a confluence of events, a set of small storms that combined into one very big one. But just as large hurricanes do not usually form unless the air and sea are at the right temperature, large financial storms require certain environmental condi- tions to be present. Businesses respond to many inputs, but most are ultimately responsible to their investors. When investors set aside common sense and instead look for reasons to justify irrational behav