A Century of Government Oversight on AT&T.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone and created the Bell Telephone company, which licensed local telephone service across major US cities. By 1913, the telephone network grew dramatically with the slogan “one system, one policy, universal service." This universal service led Bell Telephone, AT&T into the status of a monopoly while, giving the US federal government the ability to breakup this anti-trust. The US government eventually agreed for Bell Telephone, AT&T to remain a monopoly that was regulated, forcing local competing companies to connect to their network while letting the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) approve their prices and policies. However, due to the advent of the cell phones, voice over IP and internet communication, the new AT&T claims that these century-old laws that were designed to spread phone service to all Americans should be eliminated as the country moves away from traditional telephones. Based on these outdated regulations, AT&T and T-Mobile were forbidden to complete a merger that would surpass Verizon wireless network infrastructure. To sway public opinion towards this issue, AT&T launched the anti-regulation firm called Internet Innovation Alliance to push AT&T’s agenda of unregulated network infrastructure. The firm released a report titled "Telecommunications competition: the infrastructure-investment race," by Georgetown professor Anna-Maria Kovacs. The premise of this paper details proof that regulation is bad for the future consumers of a broadband network. “Dr. Kovacs finds that outdated regulations that force companies to build and maintain obsolete copper-based legacy telephone networks are unnecessarily diverting investment away from modern broadband networks and services that 95% of U.S. households prefer, desire and use". The firm explains that most organizations and users today rely on smart wireless devices like cell phones, computers and internet telephones. They state that 99% of all US communications traffic is now carried over these platforms in Internet Protocol, while legacy circuit-switched traffic is now less than 1% of traffic and likely to further decrease to a small fraction of 1% by 2017”. In addition to this regulation, AT&T is legally liable for these “legacy copper networks”, spending 154 billion these communications networks between 2006 to 2011, leaving less funds to upgrade and expand their fiber high-speed networks.

Fiber access to all users across the country is worthy and more importantly a profitable goal for AT&T. Copper telephone lines are still in use for DSL internet users, cable TV and plain old telephone users. User’s of these services remain swayed in switching to fiber lines and was seen after hurricane sandy, that wiped out copper phone service along the east coast. Verizon's solution was to abandon its traditional copper phone lines and replace them with a wireless only service that residents complained was worse than what they had before the storm. After complaints from the New York Attorney General that Verizon was trying to "depart from a century of telephone service regulation," Verizon caved in and agreed to deploy fiber lines. This victory for consumers shows the importance of regulation over telecom networks, yet AT&T, Verizon and others, should be allowed to retire these legacy technologies and services upon which its traditional regulatory authority is based.