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OK, bubble-economy analysts, raise your hands if you remember the magazine ads trumpeting "free DSL" in the 1996-97 period. A competitive carrier's claims seemed to portend an imminent crash, well before Wall Street's 1999 market valuation of Corvis Corp. as higher than General Motors, or the vicious clashes in October 2000 among DSL-centric competitive local carriers.
Sure, a carrier can argue why "X rides for free," but mama warned you about free lunches, and there was no reason in the mid-1990s to see free broadband service as anything other than the latest brand of snake oil.
Signs of froth are showing up in carrier markets yet again, where voice-over-Internet Protocol meets multilevel marketing. Yes, that's right. VoIP reseller...