Would anyone know who the 'true' long distance carriers are in the U.S.?
That is, what carriers actually own their own physical network that can carry calls to various parts of the entire United Sates (as opposed to renting space from someone else)?
Also, today the Baby Bells each hold a large geograhic area and offer long distance. Do they carry calls within their own areas? (They've always had the capability to do that).
Do whatever large once-'independent' telephone companies (ie United Telecom?) have any long distance networks? (GTE was the largest independent, but that was merged into Verizon.)
Thanks.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the 1960-70's, AT&T was mostly it, and the _largest customers_ of AT&T were MCI and Sprint. As MCI began putting together some facilities of their own, then AT&T and Sprint started buying from them, etc. They have always been each other's largest customers, even until more recent years as they developed their own networks. United Tel used to buy capacity almost exclusively from AT&T but now they buy it as much as possible from their parent company Sprint. The term 'independent' means nothing any longer (in the context of telephony) as you know, and I _think_ that all carriers try to handle their own calls within their 'territories' but even the terms 'intralata' and 'interlata' these days are very complex and vague. PAT]