A few years ago Jackson, Mississippi was the center of the telecom universe.

That's because it was the home of Canadian-born Bernard Ebbers . He married a Mississippi girl, Linda Pigott. On such chances does history turn.

Ebbers launched a long distance outfit called LDDS in the early 1980s and turned it into a classic "roll-up," buying other companies (usually for stock) and managing to the numbers.

Eventually he named his monstrosity Worldcom.

The result was the MCI scandal.

Roll-ups usually end this way.

There's nothing in a collection of badly-run businesses that makes them inherently valuable. But Wall Street keeps believing the lie, assuming that, with less competition, the kludge can charge what it wants. Besides, if there are only three-or-four "viable" entities in a market, rolling up the rest into a fourth (or fifth) can't be bad, can it?

Well, it can. My point today is that the roll-up process has begun in the mobile phone market.

You deserve a warning before this ball gets rolling. Call it the Roll-Up Clue, or Dana's Rule of Roll-ups.

Customers of small outfits are going to be screwed. Customers generally are going to be screwed (by reduced competition and higher prices). Those investors who don't get out of the roll-up are going to be screwed. The only people who aren't going to be screwed are the investment bankers who will bankroll this nonsense.

And there's not a thing any of us can do about it.