My father-in-law, Lou Harding, was a brilliant businessman. He found angles and opportunities that others missed. For instance, he and his partner once bought the right-of-way of an old railroad line because he knew telecom carriers would want it to lay fiber-optic cables. My favorite story about Lou’s business acumen also has a telecom angle – it involved AT+T. AT+T was the bluest of blue-chip companies, paying regular dividends each quarter for decades, and was a staple for pension funds and widowers because it was such a safe investment. It was the most widely held stock in the U.S. So anything impacting AT&T had a monumental affect on America. In the early 1980s, that impact came. The U.S. Justice Department was breaking up AT+T. “Ma Bell” had a monopoly on local phone service via its network of local operating companies, and there was very little long-distance competition. If you wanted to use an alternate carrier, such as MCI, you had to dial an 800 number, enter