When this volume reaches the bookstores, it will have been in publication for more than two decades. That is but a fraction of telecommunications’ lifespan, which started with the invention of the telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century. Despite the enormous amount of technical progress telecommunications saw in its first hundred and fifty years, more pivotal changes have come about in the past thirty years. The telecommunications system has been fundamentally reshaped, not so much by technology as by political processes that have resulted in a veritable explosion of companies vying for advantage. For many companies implosion may be a more apt term than explosion. Thirty years ago when the U.S. Department of Justice was launching its antitrust case that was to break up the Bell System, AT&T was the dominant company in telecommunications and one of the largest in the world. Now, except for its name, which survives in the products of its acquirers, the company has vanished from the telecommunications landscape.