 early years of the telephone network may have followed this precise pattern, and AT&T turned to a strategy of merger to monopoly to escape from it. This change in tactics prompted the federal government to bring its first major antitrust suit against the Bell System, which was ultimately settled by the so-called Kingsbury Commitment, named after the AT&T vice president who negotiated the terms of the consent decree with Attor- ney General J.C. McReynolds. Under the Kingsbury Commitment, the Bell System agreed to stop acquiring independent local telephone companies with which it competed, although the agreement permitted the Bell System to acquire indepen- dent local telephone companies operating in areas that it did not serve. AT&T also agreed to allow the independent telephone companies to interconnect with its long distance network (AT&T 1914). Although the Kingsbury Commitment ostensibly Antitrust as Applied to Network Industries forbade the Bell System to acquire competing independent telephone systems, the government immediately backtracked on this position, announcing that the set- tlement was not meant to prevent communities from eliminating dual service if they SO chose (United States V. AT&T, No. 6082 (D. Or. Sept. 7, 1914), reprinted in Shale 1918). In practice, the government permitted Bell acquisitions of competing independents SO long as the Bell System and the independents swapped lines SO that neither obtained a net increase in total subscribers. As a result, during the time the Kingsbury Commitment was in effect, the federal government nonetheless approved the Bell System's acquiring a total of 241,000 additional stations while transferring 58,000 stations to the independents (Gabel 1969; Mueller 1997). The result was a division of markets in which both the Bell System and the independents ended up with monopolies within their service areas. In the end, the regulatory regime created by the Kingsbury Commitment was abolished (with the full support of the independents) by the enactment of the Willi