Regional Bell Operating Company

Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), commonly called the Baby Bells, were the seven local telephone companies created by the divestiture of AT&T in 1984. Each RBOC inherited a geographically defined monopoly over local telephone service, while AT&T retained long-distance service and equipment manufacturing. The theory was that local service was a natural monopoly while long-distance could be competitive — but the RBOCs used their control of the local loop to dominate the transition to broadband and eventually re-consolidated through merger, reassembling the integrated structure that divestiture had dispersed.

The RBOCs demonstrate a structural pattern that antitrust scholars consistently underestimate: separation without ongoing architectural governance is temporary when network effects favor re-integration.