United States v. AT&T

United States v. AT&T was the 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.

In the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission suspected that the American Telephone & Telegraph Company was using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the costs of its network, which was contrary to U.S. antitrust law. (Yurick, p. 7) The case was filed by the United States Department of Justice in 1974.

In 1978, Judge Harold H. Greene of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on his first day on the bench, took over the case. It was settled in 1982 by the means of a consent decree between AT&T and the Department of Justice, called the Modification of Final Judgment as agreed by AT&T Chairman Charles L. Brown.

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