Cite as: 525 U. S. 366 (1999)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
See, e. g., id., at 185-207. Although the quasi-competitive system had significant drawbacks from the consumers' stand-point—principally the refusal of competing systems to inter-connect—perhaps the strongest advocate of state regulation was AT&T itself. Ibid. The company's arguments that telephone service was naturally monopolistic and that competition was resulting in wasteful duplication of facilities appealed to Progressive-era legislatures. Cohen, The Telephone Problem and the Road to Telephone Regulation in the United States, 3 J. Policy Hist. 42, 55-57 (1991); see generally Lipartito, supra, at 185-207. By 1915, most States had established public utility commissions and charged them with regulating telephone service. Brooks, supra, at 144. Over time, the Bell Companies' policy of buying out independent providers coupled with the state commissions' practice of prohibiting competitive entry led back to the monopoly provision of local telephone service. See R. Garnet, The Telephone Enterprise: The Evolution of the Bell System's Horizontal Structure, 1876-1909, 146-153 (1985).
Early federal telecommunications regulation, which began with the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, did not displace the States' fledgling efforts to regulate intrastate telephone service. To the contrary, the Mann-Elkins Act extended the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to cover only interstate and international telecommunications services.2 As a result, state and federal agencies were required to meticulously separate the intrastate and interstate aspects of telephone services. Accordingly, in Smith v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co., 282 U. S. 133 (1930), this Court
2 The Mann-Elkins Act provided, in relevant part, that "the provisions of this Act shall apply to . . . telegraph, telephone, and cable companies . . . engaged in sending messages from one State, Territory, or District of the United States, to any other State, Territory or District of the United States, or to any foreign country, who shall be considered and held to be common carriers within the meaning and purpose of this Act." Act of June 18, 1910, ch. 309, § 7, 36 Stat. 544-545.
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