The problems of telecommunications planning and management are rapidly becoming more complex and more pressing: Significant advances in technology have greatly increased the capabilities of communications networks, costs are declining, and simultaneously deregulation and the AT&T divestiture have introduced a confusing array of new options. And yet the strategic opportunities for application of telecommunications—the opportunities to use telecommunications and information systems to alter in some fundamental way a firm, its position in its marketplace, or its relationships with customers and competitors—have never been greater.