Thank you for giving me an interesting proposition to take issue with: namely, that the phone system – whatever that means – is about to end. I’m going to explore three main points related to this proposition. First, that we should be speaking of a transition, not an endpoint. Second, that as this transition continues to unfold, federal and state governments have key roles to play in protecting consumers and promoting competition. And finally, that you should not worry about running out of interesting papers to write, because we have not yet run out of hard problems to solve, in particular crafting appropriate transitions for universal service and interconnection policies.

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