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Excerpt from Popular Mechanics -- "The Act focused on the division of the internet into two parts: The national and international network, allowing the internet to be the information delivery system it became, and the 'last mile' or 'local loop,' which brought the service into the home user. The goal was for competition between incumbent service providers and new businesses to be focused on this second section. Think of like a highway where the road is free to use, but you have a pay a toll for the on- and off-ramps. The fight was for the ramps. However, as NYU economics professor Nicholas Economides pointed out in a 1998 examination of the act and its fallout, it wasn't much of a fight. For starters, building the 'local loop' required a few basic things smaller businesses didn't have—foremost, cooperation from the telephone and cable companies that already laid down the infrastructure, and who, frankly, weren't and aren't keen on competitors trying to piggy-back on the digging they'd already done."

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