Certain uncertainty.

Seems once we entered this brave new century, the world changed--quickly and without warning. In the aftermath of September 11 and ongoing alerts and threats, we've been forced to re-assess our personal safety. And in the wake of unprecedented corporate misconduct and mega-bankruptcies, we find ourselves re-calculating our financial future, while honest, hard-working businesses caught in the cyclone keep a wary eye on the next shoe to drop.

The rural telecom industry has suffered a particularly hard blow with the July revelation of WorldCom's elusive accounting practices and subsequent bankruptcy. For small, rural telcos, this development means more than another example of corporate wrongdoing. It hits much closer to home: this corporate malfeasance is a potential strike to their livelihood.

In this issue of Rural Telecommunications, Brian O'Hara, NTCA's regulatory analyst, examines the WorldCom and other recent telecom bankruptcies, and their potential impact on rural telcos. In "Telecom Bankruptcies: A High Price to Pay for Competition," O'Hara writes, "The total impact of the recent bankruptcies is difficult to calculate. It is estimated that WorldCom alone owed incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) hundreds of millions of dollars for services provided at the time it filed bankruptcy."

In a related article, Regina McNeil, director and senior counsel for the National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA), and NTCA's Marie Guillory, vice president of legal and industry, paint a dire picture of what small rural telcos can expect in light of the bankruptcies. As Guillory points out, "Rural companies should not have to pay for the irresponsible behavior of these companies, but unfortunately will, because bankruptcy laws are tilted to allow the debtor to get back in business."

That the telecom sector has taken such an ungraceful fall is hardly surprising to some. In the post break-up of the regional Bell systems and the ensuing, seemingly endless heyday of the 1990s telecom era, NTCA members were cautioning against an overzealous embrace of unchecked competition and a one-size-fits-all approach to telecom deregulation.

In the article, "Missed Message: The Rise and Fall of Telecom," Tom Wacker, NTCA's director of government affairs, tells of the events that led to telecom's downfall, and the early rural voices that forewarned policy-makers of the potential fallout. Today, given the unstable state of the economy and new congressional leaders, "the telecom sector continues to find itself in the starring role of the agendas of policy-makers of all stripes," Wacker writes. "While this may appear attractive, in reality, it once again puts the rural sector of the industry in the tenable situation of serving as the tempering voice antony the chaos."

Amidst the "chaos," of course, is the daily business of running the business. in "'Supervising the Supervisor, Avoiding Liability for the Boss' Actions," Michael R. Burrow, general counsel for Hancock Telecom in Indiana, points out that protecting a business from employee liabilities starts at the supervisory level. It isn't enough to instruct employees to only drive the company vehicle for company business, or to set up safety committees, Burrow notes.

And in "ISPs Beware: Third-party Liability for Cyber Wrongs," Anne Perkins, NTCA's law clerk, analyzes what the court decision in the now renowned Napster case means to rural telcos that also are Internet service providers.

To say things are changing would be an understatement of profound proportion. We have entered a new century" that in some ways bears little resemblance to the one we left behind. Adaptability seems to be a key component of today's realities, be it from a business standpoint, or in our daily lives.

Fortunately for NTCA members, adaptability is hardly a new concept; their record in providing the latest telecommunications services to their communities speaks for itself. That's one reality that won't change.