AT&T Antitrust Act (MFJ)
I figured since we were discussing this in class today, I decided Iwould add to my blogs a case brief I wrote about this act.
US v ATT, 427 F.Supp. 57, Sec II (DCDC 1976)
In1974, District Court Judge Waddy ruled that AT&T status as an FCC regulated common carriers did not give it exemption from antitrust lawsuits. US v ATT, 427 F.Supp. 57, Sec II (DCDC 1976). The Court therefore concludes that the communication Act does not expressly, or impliedly, repeal the antitrust laws. Neither the language, nor the legislative history of the Communications Act supports the conclusion that Congress intended by that Act to grant a total, blanket immunity to defendants from application of antitrust laws, and to place exclusive jurisdiction over all their conduct in the Federal Communications Commission.1
Then, in 1978, Judge Waddy retired and Judge Harold Greene, on his first day on the Bench, draws the AT&T case. Through the valuable case management of Judge Harold Greene, as well as the efforts of various other backers in the political and business world, gave rise to the biggest antitrust success of the 20th century. The suit had alleged that AT&T had used its lawful monopoly over local exchange services, operated by the BOCs, to also monopolize long distance services and telephone equipment manufacturing by limiting and abolishing competition from other long distance companies and suppliers of telephone equipment. Coinciding as this did with a growing awareness among economists, government policy-makers, and the public at large of the limits to regulation, the groundwork was laid for the deregulatory solution adopted in the 1982 antitrust decree.2
Finally, January 8, 1982, the antitrust suit is settled with AT&T agreeing to divestiture of the BOCs. The theory was the separation of those parts of AT&T which comprised natural monopolies, the BOCs, and those parts of AT&T that were potentially competitive, the long distance service. AT&T would be broken into small companies, Bell Operating Companies. BOCs would be local operating companies that were not permitted to enter the long distance, information service or manufacturing markets. They would provide equal access to any long distance company. The BOCs got the use of the trademark and logo "Bell".2
United States v. AT&T was the landmark antitrust case in the United States that led to the 1984 Bell System divestiture, the breakup of the old American Telephone & Telegraph into the new, seven regional Bell operating companies (RBOC)s and the much smaller new AT&T.
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1Silicon Flatirons. (2003, October 16). AT&T Case in Perspective: A 20 Year Retrospective. Retrieved June 24, 2009, from Silicon Flatirons: http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/events.php?id=77
2 Google Books. (2004). Google. In C. C. Northrup, The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia (pp. 351-352). ABC-CLIO.