AT&T's near ubiquitous control of telecommunications cable in the United States facilitated their control over the market. All other vendors had to work through them in order to do business with any customers (Dodd, 2005). As one might imagine, this caused more than a little resentment among other telecommunication companies.

             The 1984 Divestiture, also known as the Modified Final Judgment, mandated at the very least competition for long distance service in the United States. AT&T was required to spin off its local telephone companies-a total of 22 spread across the nation. However, local telephone service would remain a monopoly. Each of those 22 companies retained complete control over the local market between 1984 and 1996. But, breaking up AT&T's complete control over the whole of the local telephone market was seen as a significant enough accomplishment for the ruling. The 22 companies were subsequently reorganized into 7 RBOCs, or regional Bell operating companies. A centralized organization was created, Bellcore, which had two primary functions. One, it would act as a central contact point for all National Security and Emergency Preparedness issues. Two, it would act as a technical resource for all the local telephone companies that had been spun off (Dodd, 2005). .

             In the years between 1984 and 1996, the Divestiture process was not kind to AT&T and its business. The corporation suffered repeated failures and declines as it struggled to adapt to this new model of doing business in the telecommunications industry. Revenue declines and failed purchases were all too common. Over the course of this period, the corporation also continued to break up, as financial difficulties forced it to relinquish control of formerly integral parts of its business. Failures throughout the late 1980s and 1990s forced AT&T to spin off both Lucent Technology and NCR in 1996 around the time that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed (Dodd, 2005).