Kingsbury Commitment

The Kingsbury Commitment of 1913 was an out-of-court settlement of the government's antitrust challenge of AT&T's growing vertical monopoly over the phone industry. In return for the government's agreement not to pursue its case against AT&T as a monopolist, AT&T agreed to divest the controlling interest it had acquired in the Western Union telegraph company, and to allow non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect with the AT&T long distance network.