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From: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Connections Between Carriers Within a LATA
Message-ID: <9840@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 17 Jul 90 13:23:36 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 493, Message 8 of 9


In article <9781@accuvax.nwu.edu> is written:

>When there's more than one local exchange carrier operating within a
>LATA, is service between them provided by a long distance carrier, or
>by the carriers interconnecting directly, or both?

Within a LATA, the carriers hook up any old way they want.  In fact,
one LEC may use a second to get to inter-lata long distance carriers.
For example, my uncle's phone company in northwestern Vermont has
always connected only to New England Tel, with NET forwarding
inter-lata calls to AT&T.  AT&T recently ran a line directly to his
telco bypassing NET -- even though his call volume is pretty small,
NET was charging enough that it was worth their while to run a line
all the way from Manchester NH.

No other LD carrier has asked to be connected to his company, and he
doesn't even have billing arrangements with any of them.  I keep
meaning to call him collect via Sprint so we can see what, if anything
happens to the bill.  He's not looking forward to equal access, it
will be a lot of work and expense, and he expects nearly all of his
customers would stick with AT&T anyway, most of them being Vermont
farmers.

I have heard that in Indiana, all of the independent telcos have
banded together to form a peculiar long distance company called
Indiana Switch, which is the exclusive LD carrier for all of them.
Indiana Switch has a central POP to which all of the other LD carriers
can connect.  I assume that the telcos pass regular ANI info to
Indiana Switch, which looks up the numbers in one central database and
routes each call to the subscriber's preferred carrier.  In this way,
the telcos avoid having to implement equal access locally, except
perhaps to reprogram some more modern exchanges to pass 10XXX.

Regards,

John Levine, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl