Bell Telephone, and later AT&T, was the pioneer of the telecommunications industry in the United States. They ran the first copper cable, manufactured the first telephone devices, and provided the first telephone service. With such a long history of success, it is no wonder that AT&T is still around today. Owning all of the existing telecommunications infrastructure made it impossible for competitors to enter the market. It was not financially viable for anyone to try and establish a parallel infrastructure (that is, bare the cost to bury thousands of miles of cable.) For this reason, the US government had to step in and AT&T eventually became a regulated monopoly. The company was then divested into seperate regional telephone companies.