Carl,
Since you asked:
> P.S. What is RBOC bypass?
RBOC is the traditional telecommunications industry term for
"Regional Bell Operating Companies" (aka "The Baby Bells"),
created as a result of the break-up of AT&T way back. Examples
are Ameritech, Pacific Bell, and...(grrr) Bell Atlantic,
recently renamed Verizon Wireless (as a thinly veiled disguise
to hide the guilty).
Much of the mass hysteria (good hysteria, mind you) regarding
the supply of new, faster, cheaper information services over
high-speed communications revolves around circumventing the
beauracratic RBOCs and their relatively slow and antiquated
communications lines. The term "bypass" normally refers to
the action of going around the RBOCs to provide services normally
provided by the RBOCs.
Of course, bypass is really directed to those companies referred
to as ILECs (or Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers). Strictly
speaking, all instances of "RBOC" in the above description should
really be replaced with "ILEC", since not all ILECs are RBOCs.
However, for the vast majority of customers in the U.S., their
ILECs are more often RBOCs.
Just to make this lesson in telecomm FLAs (Four Letter Acronyms)
complete, the emerging set of companies trying to go head-to-head
with the ILECs for common voice services are called CLECs (or
Competitive Local Exchange Carriers).
E I E I O... ;-)
Like I always say, an informed telecomm customer is a CONFUSED
customer. (YMMV)
...jay
PS: When can I buy one of those QUALDOCS-fax thing-a-ma-jingies? ;-)
(Egad, I hope the answer isn't, "When IPP notifications are
finalized... :-O