Lesson 12: The Divestiture of AT&T

150 Years of American Telecommunications: The Online Course

Join Section A for Free

A two-way radio salesman from Illinois asked the government in 1963 for a microwave route between Chicago and St. Louis, and AT&T fought the application for six years. That company became MCI, and the Justice Department sued AT&T, Western Electric, and Bell Labs for monopolization in November 1974. AT&T settled on January 8, 1982 by surrendering the 22 local telephone companies that made it the largest corporation in the world. Seven regional holding companies took over local service on January 1, 1984, and AT&T's assets fell from roughly $150 billion to $34 billion. The breakup remains the largest in American antitrust history, and the courts weighing Google's monopolies in 2025 and 2026 have so far left the search giant whole.

đź’ˇ
Where this lesson sits. An antitrust suit ends with a court choosing a remedy, and the court can either change what a company owns or write rules for how it behaves. This lesson covers the case that produced one of the largest ownership breakups in American history. In 1974 the Justice Department sued AT&T, the company that owned most of the American telephone system, and in 1982 AT&T settled by agreeing to surrender its local telephone companies. The breakup opened the long-distance market to competitors building their own microwave and fiber networks, and Section D's internet traffic would later travel those networks. Lesson 13: Early Mobile Phone and Cellular Service closes Section C with the telephone that needed no wire at all.

Popular Tags

Senate Commerce to Vote on Thumann’s Nomination Nov. 18 FCC 6 Members of Congress Set for 'Broadband and AI' as Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Jennifer McClellan Join Keynote Lineup Broadband's Impact Clearfield Supports East Central Energy’s First-in-Minnesota BEAD Expansion Project BEAD NTIA Failed to Keep Key Records Behind $42B BEAD Allocations, Audit Finds NTIA Lesson 12: The Divestiture of AT&T AT&T Senate Commerce to Vote on Thumann’s Nomination Nov. 18 Donald Trump