Harold Greene dies: Judge presided over case that broke up Ma Bell

Harold H. Greene, the federal judge who presided over the AT&T breakup - a case that changed the shape of telecommunications worldwide - died in Washington on Jan. 29. He was 76.

Greene drew the AT&T lawsuit soon after his appointment to Washington's Superior Court by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. By that time, the AT&T case had become a dispute over local access between AT&T, which operated both local and long-distance service, and upstart long-distance provider MCI. The Justice Department also had opted to bring an antitrust suit against AT&T, citing the company's use of profits from regulated services, such as phone, to subsidize unregulated businesses, such as equipment manufacturing.

The antitrust portion of the case took 11 months, occupied 30 to 40 lawyers and never had a verdict: AT&T and the DOJ signed a consent decree that divided the company into seven RBOCs.

Greene maintained that he had not decided how he would rule in the case. "I didn't dream up the breakup of AT&T," he said in a 1996 interview. But he said that the resulting competition among local and long-distance providers "provided great benefit to American businesses, to the economy and to American life in general."

The AT&T breakup, which spawned a cottage legal industry for attorneys, also paved the way for the Telecom Act of 1996, which arose from competitive local exchange carriers' claims that RBOCs were freezing them out of local networks.

"Judge Greene had as much to do with key [telecom] legislation as any other single person," said David Turetsky, senior vice president for law and regulatory affairs at Teligent.

The case also produced a notable indirect result. DOJ antitrust efforts were under attack by a presidential commission. But some observers say Greene's handling of the complex AT&T case emboldened the agency to bring more high-tech antirust cases, including the one now proceeding against Microsoft.