5. Breaking up the Bells

In 1974, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against the old American Telephone & Telegraph Company and accused it of using its monopoly powers to prevent its competition to grow.

It was then the world's largest corporation with assets valued at $125 billion, which made it bigger than U.S. Steel, General Motors and Exxon combined.  It was also the second largest employer in the nation next only to federal government.

10 years after the filing of the suit, the parties settled and the huge conglomerate was split into seven Bell telecommunication companies and became a much smaller AT&T. This litigation was then commonly referred to as Ma Bell.

The breakup of Ma Bell marked the beginning of a telecommunications revolution thanks to innovations such as fiber optics and microprocessors.  New telephone technology provided features like call forwarding, remote retrieval of stored calls, and cordless phones.