What's the Clue from SBC's purchase of AT&T and Verizon's coming purchase of MCI? (That's a 1949 Southern Bell logo, from the Knox County, Tennessee historical collection. Beautiful, isn't it?)

The Bells know they are irrelevant to the future. They hope to become too big to fail.

Regulators in most of the world understand that phone monopolies need to be broken up, not just for the sake of competition but for the sake of technology. The EU is spurring the development of VOIP and regularly slapping the hands of "incumbent carriers." The developing world, meanwhile, is able to create multiple wireless competitors, by fiat, and watch competition drive innovation to a degree we can only dream of.

Why are the U.S. Bells the only phone companies in the world that could truly become "too big to fail?"

Pay-offs. The Bells control government at all levels today. They're the biggest lobbyists in Washington and in every state capitol. And they get what they want, public interest be damned, public needs be damned.

American policy is becoming enslaved to investments of a century ago. Those wires on the phone poles outside your home -- they are slowly strangling you.

The only way to cut those cords is by mandating competition, and by truly breaking up the biggest competitors.

But that's not the direction we're going in.