What is an Inter-Exchange Carrier?
An interexchange carrier (IXC) is a telephone company that provides connections between local exchanges in different geographic areas. An Interexchange Carrier (IXC) is a U.S. legal and regulatory term for a telecommunications company, commonly called a long-distance telephone company, such as MCI (before its absorption by Verizon), Sprint and the former AT&T (before its merger with SBC in 2005) in the United States. It is defined as any carrier that provides inter-LATA communication, where a LATA is a local access and transport area. An IXC carries traffic, usually voice traffic, between telephone exchanges. Telephone exchanges are usually identified in the United States by the three-digit area code (NPA) and the first three digits of the phone number (NPA-NXX). Different exchanges are generally in different geographic locations, such as separate central offices (COs, also called “wire centers”).
