Contents
Incumbent local exchange carrier
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.
Definition
An incumbent local exchange carrier is a local exchange carrier (LEC) in a specific area 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 as a LEC and in addition:
ILECs around the world
United States
In the United States, ILECs 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". Various regional independents also held incumbent monopolies in their respective regions. The largest of these was GTE, the second largest ILEC after the Bell System. GTE was later 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.
Canada
In Canada, ILECs are the original telephone companies such as Telus (BC Tel and Alberta Government Telephones), SaskTel, Manitoba Telecom Services (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.
This article is derived from Wikipedia and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. View the original article.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Bliptext is not
affiliated with or endorsed by Wikipedia or the
Wikimedia Foundation.