AT&T Has Had Many Run-Ins With the Government

AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, figures prominently in the annals of antitrust law. Since the late 19th century, under various names and configurations, the entity once known as Ma Bell has often been targeted by regulators trying to rein in its size and keep it from amassing monopoly power.  On the afternoon of June 12, a federal judge is expected to issue a ruling in AT&T’s latest battle with the Justice Department, which is attempting to block the company’s $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner. The current courtroom battle is a reminder of the complicated balancing act the government must strike in regulating ever-changing companies. “AT&T has been a dominant company from the very beginning and has sought to maintain its dominance through varying government interactions,” said Gerald Brock, a former Federal Communications Commission staff member who is a professor of public policy at George Washington University. “That’s been the sense of AT&T through the ages — that they seem to have a lot of power, but people also want to be able to communicate in a way that AT&T allows them to do.”