What does "telecommunications" mean to you? Traditional telephone service? Cable TV? Wireless phones? Well, even if it means all three, your perception would be too narrow and ignores an important development - the ongoing erosion of telecommunications as a separate industry. "A lot of boundaries that used to represent telecommunications law have gone away," says Daniel Waggoner, a lawyer in the Seattle office of Davis Wright Tremaine.

As Waggoner and his firm survey the current telecommunications landscape, they see it being absorbed into a much larger space they call "communications." Its inhabitants range from traditional phone companies, to content providers, to software firms, all delivering communications services. This morphing of telecommunications - often referred to as telecom - is one reason Waggoner's law firm, which boasts the state's largest telecom practice, merged last year with Cole, Raywid & Braverman, a 35-lawyer firm in the nation's capital that specializes in telecommunications. "That firm sees telecommunications the same way we do," he says.

Most Washington state lawyers with a telecom practice probably would agree that the industry is evolving rapidly. "The definition oftelecommunications changes daily," says Judy Endejan, a lawyer at Seattle's Graham & Dunn. She and other telecom lawyers probably also would agree that Washington - home to telecom powerhouses like Clearwire and T-Mobile USA as well as a host of smaller companies like Mobilisa and Big Fish - is a hot spot where telecom is poised to grow.

At one time, the telecommunications industry was heavily regulated. Regulation still exists, at state and federal levels, but it's far less pervasive today. Indeed, many telecom activities are either lightly regulated or regulated not at all. "If you go into a local Starbucks and use Wi-Fi, that's not regulated," says Waggoner.

Deregulation, coupled with consolidation - think Redmond's AT&T Wireless, which was sold to Cingular, which now is part of the reconstituted AT&T - has created a shrinking practice pie for some telecom lawyers. But deregulation also has transformed telecom legal practice from one that's primarily regulatory to one now largely transactional. Consequently, many telecom lawyers have replaced their lost regulatory business with more traditional services for their telecom clients, such as tax, real estate and corporate finance advice.

Perhaps the company that most symbolizes Washington's telecommunications industry is Kirkland's Clearwire. Founded just four years ago by Craig McCaw, an early wireless pioneer, Clearwire provides wireless high-speed Internet service to approximately 8.9 million people in a dozen states. "The company appeared out of nowhere," says Waggoner.

Though young, Clearwire has attracted considerable investor interest. Last year, it raised $1.1 billion in venture capital. This year, the company's initial public offering pulled in $600 million. Another major telecom player in the state is T-Mobile. Formerly known as VoiceStream, T-Mobile has been owned since 2001 by a German concern. Based in Bellevue, T-Mobile has 25 million customers, making it the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier. It recently spent over $1 billion to buy additional spectrum from the Federal Communications Commission.

And then there's Microsoft. Most people probably don't consider Microsoft a telecom company. But the Redmond-based giant definitely is part of the telecom scene. Case in point: Microsoft TV IPTV Edition, a software platform that permits phone companies to deliver cable TV over traditional phone lines. "This is one example of an application provider delivering technology to traditional telecoms," says Shannan Frisbie, a lawyer in the Seattle office of K&L Gates.

Washington's telecom industry, however, isn't confined to large, high-profile businesses. It's also home to an ever-growing cadre of smaller, less well-known companies, all delivering an ever-expanding array of new products and services.