There tend to be two sorts of regulatory disputes in the communications industry: the wildly Byzantine and the merely arcane.

A bitter regulatory dispute pitting railroads against grain shippers has helped depress sales of rail cars in the last eight years.

Groupon, the online discount firm, reportedly plans to make its Wall Street debut within two months after resolving a regulatory dispute.

Since last month, negotiators for the tobacco industry, state attorneys general, lawyers representing smokers and anti-smoking groups have held talks in an effort to resolve regulatory and legal disputes over cigarettes.

Five years ago the company's main asset, a nuclear power plant under construction in Michigan, became entangled in regulatory and financial disputes and construction problems.

"You have the board right where you want them," Ms. Waxman wrote Mr. Keating on May 10, 1988, 10 days before Lincoln won a major regulatory dispute.

In fact, lawsuits and regulatory disputes have been proliferating over just such practices.

While town officials consider how to deal with a regulatory dispute that has halted approval of plans for new condominiums, developers have made other residential proposals, ranging from one- to 75-lot subdivisions.

"You're saying it's a regulatory dispute?"

Some of the regulatory disputes appear near resolution, but Federal officials say co-op owners cannot rely on the government to bail them out.