Word games

Journalists love to play word games. I'm not talking about the kind where three married couples get together in the family room of a suburban split-level to play feverish charade rip-offs until an inevitable argument breaks up all three marriages.

I'm talking about games where words have meanings, connotations and effects beyond their original intent. Once you begin to dissect the meaning of any word or phrase and put it under a situational microscope, you discover a world of potential interpretations.

In his now-famous "that woman, Miss Lewinsky" comment, President Clinton debunked familiarity, downplayed age, highlighted Lewinsky's marital status(thereby highlighting her potential to be a gold digger), made Lewinsky seem lik e an accuser and painted himself as a victim-all in four words.

For telecom trade journalists, there may be few such torrid affairs on which to comment, although some regulatory and technology debates come close. However, the emerging issue of carrier identity bears reinterpretation.

Competitive local exchange carriers are allegedly the newest carriers on the block, those given a chance at life by the Telecom Act of 1996. While we may associate two negatives-debt and inexperience-with CLECs, we christen them with many more positive attributes-progressive operation, service differentiation, competitive pricing, modern networks, innovative marketing, free enterprise, maverick philosophy, adventure, newness and youth.

It pays to be identified as a CLEC. But what is a CLEC? Is it what we used to call a competitive access provider or a carrier that has started up only since the passage of the telecom act? "Competitive" and "LEC" certainly could be applied to many carriers that do not fit in either of those categories. Some traditional LECs have been around for a while but seem to be learning to compete as multiservice, multimarket, non-monopolist companies. Others don't yet compete head-to-head with other LECs, but should we call them non-competitive LECs? Does that mean they decline to do business like a quarterback in a salary dispute?

In the rush to win a piece of the industry's future, many companies want to be known as CLECs, and ideally all of them-not just those that started up in the last two years-will be considered competitive carriers. In fact, traditional LECs need to convince themselves that "competitive" is an accurate way to describe their place in the market, unless they plan to sit out.