Communications technologies continue to improve despite the telecom recession. As the gap widens between what is possible and what is deployed, the threat to established business models grows accordingly. The ILECs and their allies in the publishing/entertainment industry and other sectors must fight harder and harder to preserve the technological underpinnings of their old business. The Tauzin-Dingell DSL non-competition bill is an example of such a hold-back-the-future battle. Fortunately, it is likely to die in the U.S. Senate. Senator Hollings, chairman of the Senate's Commerce Committee, vividly described the bill's purpose in a Senate speech on February 25, 2002: "Hailed as a way to enhance competition, it eliminates it. Touted as a way to enhance broadband communications, it merely allows the Bell companies to extend their local monopoly into broadband." Despite the anticipated death of Tauzin-Dingell, the network of the future has few friends in government. Hollings is no gigabit guru; he is opposed to Tauzin- Dingell because he is a friend of AT&T (the *cable* non- competition company) and to the konstipated kontent krowd. Meanwhile, the ILEC teleban is regrouping in regulatory and legislative caves of several state governments. Having killed off the Competitive Local Exchange (CLEC) business, it is going after the next threat -- forward looking public entities, such as municipal utility districts and publicly owned power companies, that see how important an advanced communications infrastructure is to their local economies.

It seems that legal issues may prevent the US from repeating Canada's success with customer-owned networks. And if you are still under the impression that the telecom collapse has nothing to do with intellectual property, just ask David Isenberg.