Great article! Your argument is right on point so why is the FCC giving such power to the incumbents? The concessions are meager and will only embolden the ILEC's. SBC is already displaying their feathers. In a recent BusinesWeek article, CEO Whitacre thinks he can monetize internet traffic: Talking about Vonage and Google... "How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" I wonder if Whitacre can spell "Anti-Trust"? While the incumbents are still required to sell some basic last mile elements to competitors, it is indeed a "game over" proposition for many CLEC's who built their business on the 1996 Telecom act.