<text>GTE sells its last remaining ownership interest in Sprint to its former partner United Telecommunications. US West and Tele-Communications, Inc. agree to a joint venture to develop local fiber optic networks. TCI buys 50% of Teleport Communications, the largest "bypass" carrier in the country.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_23781.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Retail prices for hand-held portable cellular phones drop below $500, while car phones retail for less than $100. Drug enforcent officials seek to curtail use of beepers by students in inner-city high schools and ask Congress to require telephone companies not to use fiber optic facilities or digital transmission protocols, which make wiretapping more difficult.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_23474.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The Commission finally rules on a 1988 Bell Atlantic request for so-called "billed party preference," a "0+" dialing arrangement under which the called party selects the long-distance carrier. The FCC tentatively adopts the proposal, but requests additional comments to clarify whether the plan is still technically feasible.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_27931.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The FCC begins a rulemaking inquiry into Personal Communications Services, or PCS, which it anticipates will serve as the underpinning for personal, mobile communications. In February, Bell Atlantic announces trials of a service permitting a single telephone number to be used , and to follow the user automatically, regardless of the user's location or type of telephone.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_21371.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The FCC issues new customer solicitation rules for long-distance companies in order to prevent the so-called "slamming" practices which were the subject of AT&T and MCI's battles in 1989.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_27185.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Judge Greene vacates the MFJ's "information services" restriction in an opinion which stresses his strong disagreement with the conservative directions imposed by the Court of Appeals. The Bell Companies appeal from Greene's grant of a stay pending appeal and succeed in having the stay, in turn, vacated.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_27725.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>In December, the FCC cracks down on operator services providers, issuing a series of orders requiring these companies to reduce their rates to "just and reasonable" levels.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_24282.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The Commission initiates a rulemaking into the issue of interconnection for Competitive Access Providers (CAPs) for special and switched access services used in competition with local telephone companies.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_25767.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>In April, Judge Harold Greene conducts hearings, on remand from the D.C. Circuit, to consider whether removal of the MFJ restriction against Bell Company provision of information services is in the "public interest."</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_26601.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Congress passes legislation requiring "Alternative Oper-ator Services" companies to provide their name and ratesto callers and prohibiting blocking of access to "800" and "950" services.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_26365.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>AT&T introduces its "Universal" credit card, the first card combining a telephone calling card with Mastercard/VISA, offering free limetime memberships to customers signing up in the first year.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_25190.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco) reverses the FCC's "Computer III" decision, ruling that the Commission had not adequately supported its aban- donment of the 10-year policy requiring "structural safeguards" between Bell Company local exchange and "enhanced" services.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_22709.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Bell Atlantic begins commercial offering and adver- tisements for "Caller ID" service in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and other states, initiating a wide-ranging public debate regarding telephone privacy.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_22234.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The FCC issues a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking pro- posing deregulation of most of AT&T's interstate ser- vices under a scheme called "maximum streamlined reg- ulation."</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_21700.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>In May, the D.C. Circuit affirms the district court's 1987 "triennial review" decision with regard to long-distance and information services, but reverses and remands the court's "gateway" information services decision for further consideration. The Bell Companies also retain Harvard Professor Lawrence Tribe and former federal judge Robert Bork to argue that the MFJ and FCC re- strictions on telco/cable cross-ownership violate the First Amendment.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_24717.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Several Bell companies withdraw their "gateway" services from the market. Bell Atlantic asks DOJ permission to offer "enhanced" gateway services, including advertisements.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_22408.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>In January, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirms the MFJ court's decision that the equipment manufacturing provisions of the decree also prohibit the Bell companies from research and product development.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_20578.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The House Communications Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Markey (D-Mass.), holds a series of hearings on proposed legislation to permit Bell company equipment manu- acturing and information services activities. The Bell Companies place jingoistic full-page ads in the New York Times, picturing Samurai warriors and suggesting that the MFJ is permitting the Japanese to buy up America. The ads are withdrawn after drawing a firestorm of protest.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_20918.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text><span class="style1">n its </span><span class="style2">Tariff 12</span><span class="style1"> and </span><span class="style2">Tariff 15</span><span class="style1"> decisions, the FCC permits AT&T to create customer-specific tariff offerings in order to respond to competition from other carriers. AT&T files a complaint with the Commission against MCI, charging that MCI is offering off-tariff prices to favored business customers in violation of the Communications Act requirement of non-discriminatory rates. AT&T and MCI also return to court, this time charging each other with deceptive selling practices and misleading advertisements.</span></text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_23070.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>In December, the divestiture court rules that the pro- hibition against Bell company equipment manufacturing encompasses research and development activities as well.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_19051.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The FCC adopts a "price cap" plan to regulate AT&T by setting limits on the maximum prices it can charge rather than by full-blown rate regulation. </text>
<text>Agreeing with the Department of Justice, the MFJ court permits Pacific Telesis to acquire a small interest in a Japanese Company building part of a trans-Pacific fiber optic cable. The court also agrees with Justice that NYNEX may acquire a large share of a trans-Atlantic cable because the risk of anticompetitive abuse is too great.</text>
<text>The National Telecommunications Information Admin- istration issues "NTIA Telecom 2000," an in-depth report on the development and growth of copmetition throughout the telephone, television and communications industries. </text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_18555.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>The divestiture court orders Bell companies to provide equal access from pay telephones and to stop discriminating in favor of AT&T with respect to credit card calls.</text>
<text>The divestiture court issues further orders clarifying the scope of permisible Bell company information services gateways. In addition, the court allows Bell companies to offer voice storage and electronic mail services. The Bell companies appeal the court's ruling.</text>
<text>Representatives Swift and Tauke re-introduce their leg- islative proposal to allow Bell Companies into manu- facturing and information services.</text>
<text>After reviewing comments from hundreds of parties representing all segments of the telecommunications industry and holding several days of oral arguments, the district court finds that competitive conditions require that the long-distance and manufacturing restriction remain unchanged. The court modifies the information services prohibition to allow Bell company "information gateways" based on Bell company claims that doing so will spur development of information services in this country. The Bell companies and the Department of Justice appeal the court's ruling.</text>
<text>The Department of Justice files its first "Triennial Report" on the continuing need for the line-of-business restrictions contained in the divestiture decree. In a significant change in policy, the Department asks the Court to modify the long-distance restriction and eliminate altogether the restrictions on Bell company information services, manufacturing, and non-telecom- munications activities. After the initial round of comments, the Department withdraws its request that the long-distance restriction be modified.</text>
<text>AT&T proposes to transfer responsibility for recom- mending line-of-business waivers under the MFJ from the Department of Justice to the FCC. The Bell companies oppose this proposal.</text>
<text>Senator Dole introduces legislation (S. 2565) to trans- fer administration of the AT&T and GTE decrees to the FCC. Senator Danforth holds "paper hearings" to deter-mine need for consent decree legislation, and receives comments that overwhelming oppose legislation. Sen- tor Danforth later introduces amendments to S. 2565 designed to provide consumer protection in the event legislation is passed.</text>
<text>The MFJ court grants a waiver allowing Pacific Telesis to acquire Communications Industries, Inc., a major provider of cellular and paging services. This marks the beginning of an extensive involvement by Bell companies in the cellular and paging businesses.</text>
<text><span class="style1">he FCC releases its initial decision in </span><span class="style2">Computer III</span><span class="style1">. This decision abandons the FCC's reliance on structural separation as a means of preventing misconduct in the provision of computer-related services by AT&T and the Bell companies. In its place, </span><span class="style2">Computer III</span><span class="style1"> adopts rules requiring the provision of "Comparably Efficient Inter-connection" (CEI) and, later, "Open Network Architecture" (ONA). The Justice Department suggests for the first time in its comments that these regulatory develop-ments may form the basis for removal of the MFJ's line of business restrictions on the local Bell companies.</span></text>
<text>MCI convinces the Court of Appeals that the FCC went too far in its deregulation efforts by ordering all non-AT&T carriers to withdraw their interstate tariffs. After winning only $35 million on retrial of its first of two antitrust suit against AT&T and the formed Bell System, MCI settles all charges for an undisclosed payment and promies of future services.</text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_19484.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Judge Greene approves entry of a consent decree between the government and GTE Corporation, permitting GTE to acquire Sprint, the third-largest long-distance company.</text>
<text>Congressmen Tom Tauke and Al Swift first introduce proposed legislation (H.R. 3800) to permit Bell com-panies into the information services and equipment manufacturing fields.</text>
<text>In the course of the year, both AT&T and the divested Bell telephone companies have submitted filings at the FCC, requesting further immediate deregulation of ser- vices in areas where they still dominate the market, and to remove protections against cross-subsidy, such as the requirement for separate subsidiaries. In response, the Commission has announced the opening of a Third Computer Inquiry to reexamine the regulatory line between network and enhanced services.</text>
<text>The FCC grants a waiver of Computer II to allow the local telephone companies to offer enhanced high-speed data transmission as part of the local switched network, further blurring the distinction between regulated basic communications and unregulated, competitive enhanced data transmission activities.</text>
<text>FCC adopts "ballot and allocation" rules requiring that customers who do not presubscribe to a long-distance carrier when equal access becomes available must be allocated to different carriers according to their market shares. The FCC also rules that customers must be allowed a period after equal access to switch carriers free of charge, and sets out procedures for resolving disagreements between long-distance companies regarding customer selection in the aggressive marketing wars characteristic of the implementation of equal access.</text>
<text>In July, equal access is introduced for the first time in Charlestown, West Virginia, by the newly divested Bell Atlantic Corporation. This permits telephone sub- scribers to call MCI and other non-AT&T long-distance companies by dialing "1+", a process known as "presub- scription." On September 1, each of the seven Regional Companies begins offering equal access in a small number of locations under the terms of "Appendix B" of the MFJ.</text>
<text>Immediately after divestiture, the Bell companies submit a number of requests for permission to enter a broad variety of new businesses. The divestiture court provides general procedures for ruling on these requests, including initial screening by the Department of Justice. In the years that follow, the divestiture court granted permission for the Bell companies to enter dozens of business ranging from real estate to foreign telecommunications activities.</text>
<text>On January 1, the divestiture went into effect, withAT&T providing long-distance services and equipment manufacture and sales, and seven regional holding companies, comprising local telephone companies with separate, "unregulated" subsidiaries for competitive activities, providing local telephone service.</text>
<text>Bowing to pressure from the House and a highly critical letter from 35 members of the Senate, the FCC agrees to reconsider its access charge decision, and, at the same time, rescinds the proposed increase in ENFIA rates.</text>
<text>In response to these extraordinary requests for local rate increases, by the soon-to-be-divested Bell Operating Companies, in November the House passesH.R. 4102, which prohibited the FCC from imposing access charges on residential subscribers and contin-ued the discount for specialized carriers' access.</text>
<text>Throughout the year, many of the local telephone companies petition state regulatory commissions for massive, unjustified rate increases. While publicly implying that they were needed because of the costs associated with divestiture, the companies' filings indicated no such reasons. In the pre-divestiture confusion, many of those requests were granted, and implemented after the divestiture in 1984.</text>
<text>The divestiture court issues a series of rulings intend-ed to ensure that the divested Bell companies will be healthy, viable companies. These including rulings relating to mobile radio services, time and weather announcements, and "metropolitan foreign exchange" services.</text>
<text>At the same time, three years before equal access for all long distance carriers, giving them the same connections as AT&T, was to be implemented, and with little im-provement in the connections long distance carriers were getting from AT&T, the Commission orders a doubling of the ENFIA rate the other carriers were paying to AT&T and local Bell companies.</text>
<text>The access charge decision proposed a radical change in the way the fixed costs of the local telephone network were paid. The previous system had been designed so that the cost of equipment used by local and long distance carriers for long distance service—wires, poles, switches, etc.—would be shared by long distance and local service. The access charge order shifted almost all of those costs onto telephone subscribers, who pay a flat monthly fee whether or not they make any long distance calls.</text>
<text>In December, the FCC announces the first of several decisions on access charges—the prices charged to the competitive long distance carriers by local telephone companies for hooking into the local network—in the post-divestiture environment.</text>
<text><span class="style1">he FCC extends its </span><span class="style2">Competitive Carrier</span><span class="style1"> deregulation of the interstate telephone industry, ruling that it will rely on market forces instead of regulation to control the rates of all carriers except AT&T, under a policy known as "forbearance."</span></text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_13280.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>After a nine-month review of the divestiture agreement, Judge Greene issues his Modified Final Judgment (MFJ) in the case. While substantially accepting the terms agreed to by AT&T and the Department of Justice, Greene, in order to strengthen the financial viability of the local telephone companies, permits them to market customer premises telephone equipment and to publish the Yellow Pages.</text>
<text>After announcement of the divestiture agreement, H.R. 5158 is modified to allow the local telephone com- panies to market customer premises equipment and publish the Yellow Pages. Consideration of the legis- lation was ended in mid-July, while it was being debated in the full Energy and Commerce Committee, because of inordinate delays and dilatory tactics by AT&T's few supporters on the Committee.</text>
<text>The settlement proposal required the local telephone companies—by September 1986—to provide access to all long distance carriers "equal in type, quality and price" to that provided by AT&T, and prohibited the local companies from manufacturing telephone equipment. Publishing of the highly profitable Yellow Pages was to have been awarded to AT&T. The proposal, however, was subject to approval by Judge Greene after a period of public comments.</text>
<text>Under the proposed settlement, AT&T retained its long distance services, Western Electric, and Bell Laboratories, and gave up its 22 local monopoly telephone companies. AT&T was barred from "electronic publishing" over its own lines, and a maximum amount of AT&T debt that could be assumed by each operating company was established</text>
<text>On January 8, faced with the reality of having to finish the antitrust trial before a judge who had clear doubts of its innocence, and with the increasing prospect of legislation mandating competition in communications markets (but not divestiture), AT&T agrees to a settle-ment of the antitrust suit proposed by the Justice Department. The settlement would require the breakup of the Bell System, the same relief the government had sought from the beginning of the antitrust case in 1974.</text>
<text><span class="style1">he FCC issues it first Report and Order in the </span><span class="style2">Compet- itive Carrier</span><span class="style1"> rulemaking, concluding that it may "stream- line" regulation for resellers and other interstate carriers that do not have market power.</span></text>
</content>
<name></name>
<script></script>
</card>
card_12031.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE card PUBLIC "-//Apple, Inc.//DTD card V 2.0//EN" "" >
<text>Late in the fall, H.R. 5158 is introduced in the House, once again promoting competition as a cornerstone of national communications policy by providing for separate subsidiaries for AT&T's competitive activities, and offering a system for deregulating communications markets when they became fully competitive.</text>
<text><span class="style1">n January 15, the </span><span class="style2">U.S. v. AT&T</span><span class="style1"> antitrust trial begins, and is immediately recessed amid speculation that a settlement is imminent. However, negotiations between the Department of Justice and AT&T broke down and the trial resumed on March 4. At the conclusion of the government's case, AT&T moved to dismiss the suit, but U.S. District Judge Harold Greene, concluding that "the testimony and the documentary evidence adduced by the government demonstrate that the Bell System has violated the antitrust laws in a number of ways over a lengthy period of time," continued the trial.</span></text>
<text>The FCC allows the resale of public switched network services like MTS (regular long distance service) and WATS, establishing a market that today accounts for a growing share of competitive long distance service.</text>
<text>H.R. 6121 is introduced in the House of Representatives, the first comprehensive update of the Communcations Act to be approved by any Congressional committee. The bill, which passed the House Commerce Committee, but never reached House floor, would have established competition as national telecommunications policy, and would have created a separate "arms length" subsidiary for AT&T's competitive offerings.</text>
<text><span class="style1">he FCC issues a second </span><span class="style2">Computer II</span><span class="style1"> decision that completely deregulated all data processing services. The decision also totally deregulated customer premises equipment and removed it form the rate base. Further, the decision allowed AT&T and GTE (the country's second largest telephone company) to sell customer premises equipment, but only through a separated subsidiary with separate accounting systems.</span></text>
<text>As a result of a long negotiation within the industry, the FCC issues its ENFIA (Exchange Network Facilities for Interstate Access) decision, the first in a long series of decisions affecting access charges. Under that agreement, a system of charges was levied on all long distance carriers. Because of their inferior connections, the new competitors were given discounted rates. This system, however, was designed as an interim step until the long distance carriers were treated equally with AT&T's long distance.</text>
<text><span class="style1">fter the </span><span class="style2">Execunet</span><span class="style1"> decision, AT&T files a tariff at the FCC to raise the cost of specialized carriers' intercon- nection with AT&T's local network by 300%. Those car- riers had vastly inferior connections into AT&T's local network (creating bad connections and necessitating dialing multidigit access numbers). They charged that AT&T was attempting to make it too expensive to com- pete in the long distance market.</span></text>
<text><span class="style1">n a tentative first decision in the </span><span class="style2">Second Computer Inquiry</span><span class="style1">, which had been initiated in 1976, the Commis- sion moves further in the direction of deregulation of customer premises telephone equipment, but takes no definitive action.</span></text>
<text>The FCC begins its inquiry in Docket No. 78-72 to determine whether interstate long-distance service should be provided on a monopoly or a competitive basis. The FCC concludes that "the potential benefits of effective competition are certainly sufficient to warrant a conclusion that the public interest will be served by preserving the possibility of effective competition in the MTS-WATS Market."</text>
<text><span class="style1">he U.S. Court of Appeals issues its Execunet decision which opened the long distance market to full compe- tition by reversing FCC decisions limiting MCI and other specialized carriers to private line services. The Court rules that in prohibiting these carriers from selling ordinary long distance services, the FCC had not shown that AT&T's monopoly of these services was in the public interest. In subsequent decisions (</span><span class="style2">Execunet II</span><span class="style1">, 1978 and </span><span class="style2">Execunet III</span><span class="style1">, 1981) the court ruled that AT&T and its local telephone companies must permit the other long distance carriers to interconnect to their local networks to start and complete their calls.</span></text>
<text>Intensive lobbying by AT&T produces more than 200 co-sponsors for the Bell Bill, which would have restoredAT&T's monopoly and stripped the FCC of its regulatory authority over competitive entry in long distance. The legislation was bottled up for months in both Houses of Congress, which explored telephone industry com-petition issues for the first time in a series of well-publicized hearings.</text>
<text>With its efforts to maintain its monopoly losing at the FCC and in the courts, AT&T turns to Congress. The Consumer Communications Reform Act, the first comprehensive attempt to modify the Communications Act since it was enacted in 1934, is introduced. This bill became known as the "Bell Bill".</text>
<text><span class="style1">n its </span><span class="style2">Resale and Shared Use</span><span class="style1"> decision, the FCC allowes unlimited resale and shared use of private line services and facilities. (Resellers lease bulk rate lines from telephone companies and resell them at a discount.) However, in ordering telephone companies to sell lines for resale, the Commission determined that, when they offer interstate communications, resellers are common carriers and must be regulated.</span></text>
<text>The FCC declares unlawful AT&T's requirement of "protective connecting arrangements" (PCAs), and institutes a registration system which enabled non-Bell equipment to be attached if it presented no potential harm to the network. It was this decision that fully opened the customer premises equipment market to competition. Because of court challenges by AT&T, however, the decision did not go into effect until 1978.</text>
<text>The FCC, acting upon a Bell System complaint, finds that MCI's Execunet Service exceeds MCI's operating authority. Execunet is a long-distance service that connects to the local switched network.</text>
<text>The Department of Justice files a new, and much more comprehensive, antitrust suit, which charged AT&T with illegal actions designed to perpetuate its monopoly in telephone service and equipment. The suit asks for the divestiture of Western Electric and "some or all of the Bell Operating Companies." For the next several years, the parties argued jurisdictional issues and undertook a lengthy discovery process, delaying the start of the trial until 1981.</text>
<text>The FCC permits "value-added networks" (VANS) into the communications market. These carriers lease private lines from other telephone companies, and with the addition of computer enhancements, sell those lines for the express purpose of transmitting data and information service.</text>
<text>In its Domsat decision, the FCC approves a competitive entry policy for domestic satelites, but prohibitedAT&T from using its satellites for transmitting competitive private line services for three years, in order to give the market an opportunity to develop.</text>
<text>The FCC issues a decision in its First Computer Inquiry, drawing a line between data processing (computer-based) services and communications services, which were to continue being regulated, in order to avoid the possibility of underwriting profit-making competitive activities with revenues from regulated telephone company activities. Because of the 1956 consent decree, AT&T was barred from offering data processing services even through a separate subsidiary. In 1973, in a case brought by GTE, the Commission's authority to draw such a line was upheld.</text>
<text><span class="style1">n its </span><span class="style2">Specialized Common Carrier</span><span class="style1"> decision, the FCC firmly establishes a national policy of open entry into private line and specialized common carrier markets. The decision also changed previous pricing practices, allowing for the first time a variety of services at a variety of prices tailored to various needs.</span></text>
<text>The FCC, by a 4-3 vote, grants MCI's application to establish a limited private line microwave long distance system between St. Louis and Chicago, asserting that such service was in the public interest. This decision marked the beginning of a competitive market in long distance services.</text>
<text><span class="style1">homas Carter, developer of a device which permitted mobile telephones to be connected to the telephone network, applies to the FCC for permission to continue marketing his product after AT&T said these were illegal attachments to the system (claiming that the </span><span class="style2">Hush-A-Phone</span><span class="style1"> decision didn't apply). In its resulting Carterfone decision, the FCC ruled that AT&T's pro-hibition was illegal. While still allowing telephone companies to require often costly "protective con-necting arrangements" (PCAs) to "protect" the system against technically harmful devices, the Commission made it clear that competition in the equipment industry was a national policy goal.</span></text>
<text>Microwave Communications, Inc. (MCI) requests permission from the FCC to build a microwave system between St. Louis and Chicago, arguing that it could provide better and cheaper private line service between customer locations in these cities. The Commission approved the application, but not until 1969.</text>
<text><span class="style1">he </span><span class="style2">Above 890</span><span class="style1"> decision not only caused AT&T to hasten its development of more efficient microwave systems, but created the first long distance price competition when AT&T, in response, filed its first tariffs for bulk line discounts. Almost ten years later, after numerous AT&T procedural delays, the FCC found that the "Telpak"discount rate tariff was illegal because it was priced well below AT&T's costs.</span></text>
<text>The seeds of competition in the long distance market were sown when several large business users of long distance, dissatisfied with the price and quality ofAT&T services, applied to the FCC for permission to build their own private microwave systems. In the Above 890 decision, the Commission found that an adequate number of microwave frequencies were available to serve both common carrier (AT&T was using these frequencies only to transmit television signals) and private networks.</text>
<text><span class="style1">he U.S. Court of Appeals ruled, in the </span><span class="style2">Hush-A-Phone</span><span class="style1">case—the first case to successfully challenge AT&T's monopoly—that the telephone customers have the rightto use their telephones in ways which are "privately beneficial without being publicly harmful." (The Hush-A-Phone was a simple cup-like device, which when attached to the mouthpiece of the phone, reduced background noises in an office. AT&T asserted that these were illegal attachments to the network, and had to be disconnected).</span></text>
<text>Over the objections of the Department of Justice's trial staff, the government and AT&T signed a consent decree, which enjoined AT&T only from engaging in any business other than provision of common carrier communications services—it was thus excluded from the computer indus- try in the United States—and barred Western Electric from any activity other than manufacturing equipment of a type to be used to provide telephone service. AT&T was also required to license Bell patents to any applicant in exchange for royalties.</text>
<text>After years of investigation of the Bell System, the government files its first antitrust suit against Western Electric, asking that Western be split off from AT&T and Bell Labs. The purpose of the suit, according to then-Attorney General Tom Clark, is to "restore competition in the manufacture and sale of telephone equipment now produced and sold almost exclusively by Western at non-competitive prices." AT&T denies the charges.</text>
<text>By 1934, AT&T owns four out of every five telephones in the country, its long distance network ties together the country's telephone system and nearly every major city is served by a Bell telephone company. The Com- munications Act of 1934 is passed by Congress, establishing the Federal Communications Commission, which governs the telephone and broadcast industries. The law gives the FCC the mandate to regulate these industries "in the public interest, convenience or necessity," and establishes as a matter of policy the goals of affordable, universally available telephone service for all Americans.</text>
<text>After a series of acquisition wars in which AT&T emerged victorious, in 1910, the Interstate Commerce Commission began the first investigation of AT&T's monopoly activities. As a result, in 1913, AT&T promised the government to allow independent phone companies to interconnect with its toll facilities, and to refrain from acquiring any more competing independent companies. This established the cooperative, non-competing relationship between the Bell System and the approximately 1,500 independent telephone companies, which still exists today, and consolidated AT&T's monopoly power.</text>
<text>Following the expiration of Bell's original patents, the industry entered a period of unrestrained competition, and as a result, by 1907, independent telephone companies had almost as many phones in service as the Bell System (about 3,000,000 each).</text>
<text>AT&T was reorganized into a holding company, becoming the parent of the Bell companies, and making Western Electric the exclusive manufacturing arm of the Bell System.</text>
<text>The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was established as a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company to operate the long distance connections among the rapidly growing local Bell telephone companies.</text>
(CDRM1080320)(1993).iso/FILES/HYP/T-Z/Telephone Chronology.sea/Telephone Chronology/BMAP_20415.png){kind=link}
(CDRM1080320)(1993).iso/FILES/HYP/T-Z/Telephone Chronology.sea/Telephone Chronology/PATs.png){kind=link}