Carterfone: My Story

Abstract

Before the Federal Communications Commision’s Carterfone decision, AT&T took the position that its telephone monopoly included the technological necessity to manufacture and control every piece of equipment that touched its network. It owned it all. It even extended the prohibition to colorful plastic covers on handsets, or phone books. The Carterfone could interconnect a telephone to a radio transceiver, enabling ranchers (among others) to keep in touch with home base. AT&T opposed it; the FCC permitted it, thereby opening the way for competition in the market for what AT&T characterized as “foreign attachments” to its network – phones manufactured by companies other than AT&T’s Western Electric, fax machines, and ultimately the early “modems” that enabled the beginning of what became the Internet. This article is the story of the Carterfone as told by the author of the FCC’s opinion.

Keywords: AT&T, Carterfone, FCC, Federal Communications Commission, Internet, telephone monopoly