 2d 1081 (7th Circuit), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 891 (1983). Divestiture: Equal Access and Chinese Walls The domestic telecommunications industry was reshaped in the 1980s by the breakup of AT&T, which created the Regional Bell Operating Companies. This led to a fully competitive long distance sector, which in turn unleashed many billions of dollars of new investment. Ironically, this restructuring, the so-called divestiture, came about as a result of a judicial proceeding that initially focused on equipment manufacturing. While the divestiture did indeed have a signifi- cant impact on the telecom equipment business, its primary focus was on the network. And it was, in effect, an official recognition of the fact that the "natural monopoly" had shrunk, leaving only limited sectors to monopoly control. Vertical Integration During the days of the monopoly, there was, for all intents and purposes, one "telephone company." In most parts of the United States it was AT&T, via its Bell Operating Companies. AT&T was vertically integrated, via its ownership of Western Electric. This distinguished it from its European counterparts, the Post, Telephone, and Telegraph agencies (PTTs), whose monopolies tended to purchase their equipment and supplies from favored national suppliers. So while the British Post Office, Deutche Bundespost, and other PTTs were monopolies to their subscribers, they benefited from some degree of competition in their own supply chains. Indeed their monopolies in telephone service also made them monopsonies (sole purchasers) for network equipment. True, there were many PTTs for a manufacturer to try to sell to. But until the 1980s, most of the larger The Great Telecom Meltdown countries saw fit to set their own network standards, with just enough variation to discourage or exclude foreign vendors, if not outright protectionist purchas- ing policies. Sweden's L.M. Ericsson and American-based multinational ITT did a good business selling to the PTTs in many smaller markets around the world, but Germany's Si