When Bell's original patent expired 15 years later in 1894, the telephone market opened to competition and 6,000 new telephone carriers started while the Bell Telephone company took a significant financial downturn [REF].
Following a government antitrust suit in 1913, AT&T agreed to the Kingsbury Commitment in which AT&T would sell their $30 million in Western Union stock, allow competitors to interconnect with their system, and not acquire other independent companies without permission from the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) [REF].