Editing Kingsbury Commitment (section)

==Continued monopoly==
Consequently, AT&T was able to consolidate its control over both the most profitable urban markets and long-distance traffic.

All telephone networks in the United States were nationalized during [[World War I]] from June 1918 to July 1919. Following re-privatization, AT&T resumed its near-monopoly position. The [[Willis Graham Act]] of 1921 allowed AT&T to acquire more local telephone systems with the genial oversight of the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] (ICC), effectively declaring the telephone business as a [[natural monopoly]]. By 1924, the ICC approved AT&T's acquisition of 223 of the 234 independent telephone companies. Between 1921 and 1934, the ICC approved 271 of the 274 purchase requests of AT&T. With the creation of the [[Federal Communications Commission]] by the [[Communications Act of 1934]], the government regulated the rates charged by AT&T.

In 1956, AT&T and the Justice Department agreed on a consent decree to end an antitrust suit brought against AT&T in 1949. Under the decree, AT&T restricted its activities to those related to running the national telephone system and agreed to license patents it had developed without royalties.<ref>{{cite web|last=Watzinger|first=Martin|last2=Fackler|first2=Thomas A.|last3=Nagler|first3=Markus|last4=Schnitzer|first4=Monika|url=https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/how_antitrust_enforcement.pdf|title=How Antitrust Enforcement Can Spur Innovation: Bell Labs And The 1956 Consent Decree|publisher=Yale University|date=2017-01-09|access-date=2024-03-08}}</ref>

In 1968, FCC regulators intervened when the Bell System tried to prevent a mobile communications system, the [[Carterfone]], from connecting to telephone lines. That decision established the principle that customers could connect any lawful device to the telephone network, even to offer a competing service.<ref>{{cite web|last=Pollack|first=Andrew|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/14/business/the-man-who-beat-at-t.html|title=The Man Who Beat A.T.& T.|publisher=The New York Times|date=1982-07-14|access-date=2024-03-08}}</ref> In the mid 1970s, emerging long-distance competitors like [[MCI Communications|MCI]] and Sprint faced the same tactic of denying interconnection, which regulators quashed, followed by a series of efforts by the Bell System phone companies to escalate the costs of interconnection as an indirect means of excluding competition. These battles resulted a large amount of antitrust litigation and ultimately led to the 1982 [[Bell System divestiture|breakup]] of the [[Bell System]].

In 1982, AT&T and the Justice Department agreed on tentative terms for settlement of antitrust suit filed against AT&T in 1974, under which AT&T divested itself of its local telephone operations, which became known as the "[[Baby Bell]]s." In return, the Justice Department agreed to lift the restrictions on AT&T activities contained in the 1956 consent decree.