![]() ![]() ![]() Under the commitment, AT&T escaped break-up or nationalization in exchange for divesting itself of Western Union and allowing non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect with its long-distance network. In 1913, the federal government challenged the Bell System's growing monopoly over the phone system under AT&T ownership in an anti-trust suit, leading to the Kingsbury Commitment. AT&T, the American Telephone and Telegraph company, who led the combined enterprise in planning and finance.Bell operating companies, providing local exchange telephone services.Bell Labs, conducting research and development for AT&T and Western Electric ownership initially equally split between Western and AT&T.Western Electric Company, Bell's equipment manufacturing arm.AT&T Long Lines, providing long lines to interconnect local exchanges and long-distance calling services, and international lines including submarine cables.Later, the Bell System and its moniker "Ma Bell" became a term that referred generally to all AT&T companies, of which there were five major divisions: AT&T became the parent of American Bell Telephone Company, and thus the head of the Bell System, because regulatory and tax rules were leaner in New York than in Boston, where American Bell was headquartered. American Bell had created AT&T to provide long-distance calls between New York and Chicago and beyond. ![]() In 1899, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) acquired the assets of its parent, the American Bell Telephone Company. Use of the Bell System name initially referred to those early telephone franchises and eventually comprised all telephone companies owned by American Telephone & Telegraph, referred to internally as associated companies, regional holding companies, or later Bell operating companies (BOCs). Within a few years local exchange companies were established in every major city in the United States. In 1877, the American Bell Telephone Company, named after Alexander Graham Bell, opened the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. The Baby Bells became independent companies and several of them are large corporations today.įurther information: History of AT&T Logo used from 1889 to 1900 This ended the existence of the conglomerate in 1984. In 1982, anticipating that it could not win, AT&T agreed to a Justice Department-mandated consent decree that settled the lawsuit and ordered it to break itself up into seven " Regional Bell Operating Companies" (known as "The Baby Bells"). Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Bell claiming violations of the Sherman Act. In 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $150 billion (equivalent to $420 billion in 2022) and employed over one million people.īeginning in the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been observing and accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power, and had brought legal action multiple times over the decades. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983.
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