Incumbent local exchange carrier

"ILEC" redirects here. For the International Legal English Certificate, see International Legal English Certificate.

An incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), is a local telephone company which held the regional monopoly on landline service before the market was opened to competitive local exchange carriers, or the corporate successor of such a firm. In much of the United States, these were originally Bell System companies, although various regional independents (including GTE) in the US held incumbent monopolies in their respective regions.

ILECs in the United States

In the United States, these were companies in existence at the time of the breakup of AT&T into the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), also known as the "Baby Bells."[1] GTE was the second largest ILEC after the Bells, but it has since been absorbed into Verizon, an RBOC. In some areas, an independent telephone company is responsible for providing local telephone exchange services in a specified geographic area.

ILECs in Canada

In Canada, ILEC's are the original telephone companies such as Telus (BC Tel and Alberta Government Telephones), SaskTel, Manitoba Telephone Systems (MTS Allstream), Bell Canada and Aliant, as well as any other company that previously held a monopoly to serve a community and continues to do so, or a successor company if it is bought and absorbed. ILECs are obligated to serve the entire exchange area as a "provider of last resort", while CLECs can choose which locations to serve, be it by facilities of their own or by resale of services of an ILEC or another CLEC.

Definition

An ILEC, with respect to an area in the United States, is a local exchange carrier (LEC) that:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) may, by rule, provide for the treatment of an LEC (or class or category thereof) as an ILEC if:

Duties

ILECs have the same duties of a LEC and in addition:

References

  1. Andrew Pollack (1 January 1984). "Bell System Break-Up Opens Era Of Great Expectations and Great Concern". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  2. "47CFR69.601". U.S. Government Printing Office.

External links

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