Anthony C. Epstein

Partner

1330 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20036
TEL: 202.429.8065
FAX: 202. 261.7507

Anthony C. Epstein is a partner in the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where he is a member of the telecommunications, antitrust, litigation, and and international groups.

Telecommunications

Mr. Epstein has experience in a wide variety of telecommunications issues. His practice includes matters not only before the Federal Communications Commission, but also before federal courts, the US Department of Justice, state public utility commissions, and state attorneys general.

Mr. Epstein has extensive experience in FCC and related proceedings concerning telecommunications mergers. For example, he represented MCI in connection with its merger with Verizon and its prior significant mergers, including Sprint, WorldCom, and British Telecommunications. He also represented MCI in connection with the mergers of Bell Atlantic-GTE, Bell Atlantic-NYNEX, SBC-Ameritech, SBC-Pacific, AT&T-MediaOne, and AT&T-TCI. He is also familiar with issues raised by international ventures and investments, such as MCI-BT and AT&T-BT.

Mr. Epstein represented MCI in a number of FCC and judicial proceedings involving interpretation and implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. His experience includes issues relating to interconnection, unbundled network elements, reasonableness of rates, customer proprietary network information, pole attachments, and participation of foreign carriers in the US market.

Mr. Epstein has also advised clients with respect to a variety of legal and policy issues concerning Internet services, including peering, distribution arrangements, and federal and state regulation of Internet access.

Among the telecommunications cases that Mr. Epstein has argued in federal appellate courts are Qwest Communications Int’l v. FCC, 229 F.3d 1172 (D.C. Cir. 2000), Gulf Power Co. v. FCC, 208 F.3d 1263 (11th Cir. 2000), rev’d in part sub nom. National Cable & Telecom. Ass’n v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U.S. 327 (2002), Gulf Power Co. v. United States, 187 F.3d 1324 (11th Cir. 1999), Bell Atlantic Telephone Cos. v. FCC, 131 F.3d 1044 (D.C. Cir. 1997), United States v. Western Electric Co., 12 F.3d 225 (D.C. Cir. 1993), and MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. FCC, 917 F.2d 30 (D.C. Cir. 1990).

Antitrust

Mr. Epstein has represented telecommunications and other clients in a wide range of antitrust matters in both litigation and counseling contexts. He has extensive experience in handling merger reviews by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. He is familiar with the issues raised by multi-jurisdictional merger investigations involving the European Commission, other national competition authorities, state attorneys general, and federal and state regulatory commissions.

Mr. Epstein has represented clients outside the merger context in civil and criminal cases and investigations by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and state attorneys general. He has handled a number of private antitrust cases, representing both plaintiffs and defendants. He represented MCI both as plaintiff and as a defendant in private antitrust cases involving domestic and international long-distance services, data services, and wireless services. His litigation and counseling matters have run the gamut from price fixing to monopolization to tying to vertical distribution arrangements to price discrimination to patent pooling and licensing to trade association activities.

International

Mr. Epstein has represented clients in connection with proceedings before the International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, and in appeals from these agencies to the US Court of International Trade and binational dispute settlement panels established under NAFTA. He has been involved in several WTO cases, before both panels and the Appellate Body. Mr. Epstein was part of the Steptoe team that acted as lead counsel to the Canadian industry in the countervailing duty case against imports of softwood lumber from Canada, the most commercially significant trade cases ever filed under the US trade laws.

Background

Mr. Epstein maintains a general litigation practice at the trial and appellate levels, representing plaintiff and defendant corporations, small businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals. He has handled a variety of pro bono matters, ranging from military commissions for detainees at Guantanamo Bay to free speech on college campuses.

Mr. Epstein is active in various professional activities, including serving as the Chair of the Committee on Unauthorized Practice of Law of the DC Court of Appeals. He was Vice Chair of the DC Bar's Rules of Professional Responsibility Review Committee, which developed a comprehensive overhaul of the DC legal ethics rules recently adopted by the DC Court of Appeals.

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