Two factors have greatly increased the competition in computing and communications. First, with communication becoming digital the boundary between computation and communication has disappeared. Communication corporations have moved into computation and vice versa. For example, AT&Tbought NCR, a computer firm, and IBM has several communications ventures. Second, competition in communication has greatly intensified with the breakup of the Bell system. As you may know, several years ago the courts broke apart the Bell system into AT&T(long distance) and the seven baby Bells (local service). Over time the court-imposed restrictions on the baby Bells have been eliminated. A fierce competition between the Bells and the cable TV companies has begun. The Bells can now offer cable TV through the phone system. This creates the incentives to replace the twisted copper wire local phone system with optical fiber. Right now mergers are taking place between different types of communications and media companies to position themselves to compete in a joint fiber optics-wireless world.