TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Please Explain LATA

Re: Please Explain LATA

Michael D. Sullivan (userid@camsul.example.invalid)
Wed, 15 Jun 2005 05:42:34 GMT

pisicuta60634@yahoo.com wrote:

> Can somebody tell me what LATA is?

Local Access and Transportation Area. It's a term from the 1982
Modification of Final Judgment -- the consent decree breaking up AT&T
-- that represented the "exchange area" for purposes of local
telephone service. The LATA is the area within which a Bell local
telephone company could transport calls. Anything beyond the LATA had
to be handed off to an Interexchange Carrier, or IXC. Some LATAs were
very large, and as a result, even though the intraLata traffic was
deemed "local" for purposes of the MFJ and could be provided by the
Bell LEC, it was actually divided up into multiple exchange areas for
purposes of call rating. This led to "IntraLata toll" or
"short-distance" calls that the Bell could handle even though they
were considered toll calls, with a per-minute charge.

Michael D. Sullivan
Bethesda, MD (USA)
(Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.)

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