For the first 50 years of the history of broadcasting and telecommunications in the United States, two models, not one, governed ownership and regulation in the telephone and radio industry. United States regulators oversaw a monopoly in telecommunications (though not a state monopoly, as in Europe). By contrast, US law provided for competition in br0adcasting. While AT&T, the monopoly telephone carrier, controlled nearly all telephone traffic, US regulators established a system of competing private broadcast stations.