In the 1990s, the PTT faced the loss of its telecommunications monopoly. As a run-up to the coming deregulation of the telecommunications market, the PTT put into place a new corporate strategy, separating its postal and telecommunications operations into two focused units. The telecommunications business became known as Swiss Telecom PTT. New telecommunications legislation was passed in 1992 that stripped away the government's monopoly status, starting with the equipment sector and digital data communications services, although maintaining the company's de facto hold on the local telephone market for most of the remainder of the decade.