Telecom Symposium: Biography of Stephen T. Perkins

Stephen T. Perkins

Stephen T. Perkins is General Counsel for Cavalier Telephone, LLC and its affiliates. Cavalier provides retail and wholesale voice, data, and video services throughout the country, principally in the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest.

Mr. Perkins earned an A.B. in politics magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1987, and a J.D. with honors from the University of Florida College of Law in 1990. While at Florida, he also studied international and EU law at the Faculteit Rechtsgeleerdheid at the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden in the Netherlands.

Before joining Cavalier, Mr. Perkins worked in antitrust, RICO, trade secrets, and insurance defense litigation at the New Orleans law firm of Hoffman Sutterfield Ensenat & Bankston. He later worked in antitrust, unfair competition, and securities litigation at the Richmond law firm of LeClair Ryan.

During his nearly nine years with Cavalier, Mr. Perkins has been at the forefront of efforts to open facilities-based competition, seeking fair and open access to collocation, transport facilities, and unbundled loops. He also led Cavalier's federal antitrust challenge against Verizon. More recently, Mr. Perkins has been heavily involved with Cavalier's entry into the video market with IPTV over copper, and with Cavalier's opposition to forbearance petitions that seek to eliminate facilities-based competition by rolling back unbundled transport and loops under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.