Whats a LATA?
LATA stands for Local Access and Transport Area, a term created by Judge Greene when he broke up Ma Bell in the early `80s into AT&T Long Distance and the original 7 regional Bell operating companies. Judge Greene tried to divide the U.S. telephone network into metropolitan statistical areas that are used by the U.S. Department of Commerce for all government statistics. The telephone network just didn’t align with the MSA boundaries, so the final set of areas are called LATAs. Over the years, the LATA boundaries have been changing and their number has been varying. Here is a list of LATAs. There are several important aspects of LATAs. First, toll calls within a LATA are commonly referred to as intraLATA toll calls, local toll calls, or regional toll calls. These calls can be carried by your local telephone company or by a long distance carrier. Until recently, the only way a long distance carrier could carry the call was by casual calling (see 5.4). Presently, in most areas you can pre
