I can say with pride that the Act is working. The E-Rate program is bringing its second successful year to a close, and now provides connectivity for one million public school classrooms. In another area of access, this last year we increased the access to the network by the 54 million Americans with disabilities. The Commission wisely withheld regulation of most advanced services, while making sure that certain features, such as the ability of one company to deliver broadband to the home over the same line another company is using to provide basic telephone service, are available to all competitors and incumbents alike. Video competition is still getting underway, but, as demonstrated by our video market competition report last week, progress is being made.
More applications are on the way.
We have reviewed and approved several mergers over the last year, after we ensured that they will not impair the FCC's responsibility to encourage wider availability of competitive options and the more rapid deployment of advanced services. Kept Our aggressive implementation of the Act is generating new classes of competitors, new industries and lower prices. I have just come this morning from a meeting of competitive local exchange carriers, or CLECs. The energy and excitement there were tremendous. Clearly that industry existed before our implementation of the 1996 Act, but never on this scale, and never at this level of intensity.