  Vibrant development of a network-based economy requires separating investment
in highly location specific local access technology from the development of
standardized, geography-independent, wide-area network services. Thus far
interconnection arrangements and associated regulations have been too closely
tied to the idiosyncratic geographic structure of individual operators'
networks. A key industry challenge is to foster the development of a wide area
lattice of common geographic points of interconnection. Sound regulatory and
anti-trust policy can help address this industry need.
