But there were two analysts — Scott Cleland of the Precursor Group in Washington and Susan Kalla, then at Bluestone Capital Partners — who were telling anyone who would listen, including me, that telecom was the biggest bubble of all, and that it, too, was about to burst.

Boy, were they ever right. Since then, more than a trillion dollars in telecom equity and debt has been vaporized. As a result of massive overbuilding and rampant price cutting, many companies were forced to close or file for bankruptcy, while even the survivors had their stock prices fall by as much as 90 percent.

Recently, however, there have been tantalizing hints that the sector might be bottoming out. Vulture investors like Carl Icahn swept in to pick up companies like XO Communications out of bankruptcy. Prices, while still falling, were falling less. And after several years of painful write-offs and layoffs and spinoffs, surviving companies have cut their costs to the point that some now boast positive cash flow and rising share prices.

So I decided to check in again with Cleland and Kalla, hoping to find out if the sector had really bottomed out and it was safe again for investors.

Yes, declared Kalla, who has since moved to Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, which peddles telecom stocks and bonds to investors. As she sees it, the rate of decline in telecom prices has pretty much leveled off. And with the explosion in Internet and cell phone use, broadband and Wi-Fi, the sector is growing again.

Most important, Kalla said, the surviving companies — from long-distance giants like AT&T to Baby Bells like Verizon to wireless providers such as Nextel — are valuable franchises that are likely to throw off tons of cash for years to come, even if their market shares erodes. And they are using that cash, she said, to begin expanding their businesses, investing in new technologies and services that allow them to earn higher margins with old customers while selectively picking up new ones as well.

In short, Kalla sees this as a good time for getting back into telecom.

A call to Cleland, however, elicited a different view. While the companies may be putting up improved financials, he said, their underlying fundamentals continue to deteriorate. Cleland sees the beginning of a second phase of the war for market share, with regional Bells, wireless providers, cable companies and long-distance services scrambling to offer consumers and businesses a bundled package of telecom services at discounted prices. That free-for-all, along with the arrival of voice service over the Internet, will cause prices to collapse, he predicted, taking industry profits with them.

"This is the business equivalent of gladiator combat in which the only winner will be the American consumer," said Cleland. He advises all but the heartiest of investors to stay away for at least the next five years.

Hoping to somehow reconcile these views, I consulted a half-dozen telecom execs in the Washington area. Like the analysts, they were badly split. Some predicted several more years of hyper-competition, destabilizing technological change and corporate carnage. And the other half figure the surviving players have enough marketing and financial strength, along with technological flexibility, to manage the industry's restructuring rather than becoming its victim.

For what it's worth, I tend to come out with the optimists. There's enough technology coming on line — cool new stuff for consumers and productivity-enhancing stuff for companies — that telecom spending can grow even as prices decline.