Act's introduction of local telephone competition. Although RBOCs could not offer services that crossed LATA boundaries, other local exchange carriers were not bound to the same restrictions. GTE, the largest independent, still owned Sprint and was not required to divest it; how- ever, GTE agreed in a separate settlement to operate its local exchange networks on a fully separate basis, subject to the same "Chinese walls" [13]. (GTE subse- quently sold partial ownership of Sprint to United Telephone, another large rural chain, which merged its own long distance subsidiary, US Telephone, into what briefly became US Sprint. GTE sold United the last of its Sprint owner- ship by 2001; along the way, United renamed itself Sprint Corp.) Connecticut's Southern New England Telephone, which had been a minority-owned BOC, was not subject to MFJ restrictions and dabbled in long distance and data serv- ices. But even the independents worked within a new industry structure that was based around LATAs. IntraLATA service was initially a monopoly of the RBOCs and other fran- chised (incumbent) local exchange carriers. Intrastate interLATA service was generally competitive, although AT&T retained a temporary monopoly in some states. Within a few years, though, many states had implemented intraLATA competition, and the FCC eventually ordered implementation of a second pre- subscribed carrier for intraLATA toll calls (which previously would have gone to the LEC). Access Charges Milked the Monopoly Three types of "access charges" were created concurrently with divestiture to recover the jurisdictionally interstate portion of network costs. Most consumers are familiar with the fixed monthly charge on the phone bill, initially $3.50 per month for a residential line. This is short for "customer access line charge," where "access" modifies "line"[] (A hyphen would have been appropriate.) It has never been a charge for access to the long distance network, as many con- sumers apparently believe, nor is this "FCC line charge," as some bills