 a customer wanted a leased line from one LATA to another, it would have to go through an interexchange carrier (IXC), as the long distance companies were called. The IXCs would each establish at least one POP in each LATA they directly served, and the local exchange carriers (LECs) would route traffic through the POPs at either end of an interexchange circuit. In effect, every interLATA circuit or call had three legs, each with its own price, although in general the IXC would be the party to make payments to the LECs on behalf of its subscribers. This sometimes had comical effects, at least in the short term. Before divestiture, New England Telephone could provide leased lines between Salem, N.H., and Lawrence, Mass., about five miles and a local phone call apart. Afterwards, the circuit had to come from an interexchange carrier. AT&T took over the existing facilities. Its only New Hampshire civilian POP was in Manchester. Although it had one in Lawrence, a post-divestiture circuit went from one five-mile route to a local leg (within Law- rence), an inter-LATA leg (Lawrence to Manchester), and an intraLATA leg from Manchester to Salem. This was bad enough, but it took AT&T some time after divestiture to get its entire circuit inventory straight-dividing the existing network between itself and the RBOCs was by no means simple. So one such circuit ordered in 1984 was reportedly routed by way of New Jersey, because the Manchester-Lawrence links were not yet in the computer, whereas both PoPs had bandwidth available to Trenton! But the LATA did create a useful framework for future network architec- ture. In addition to providing long distance companies with exclusivity on inter- LATA communications, it conveniently partitioned the country's telephone The Great Telecom Meltdown network, including insular territories, into 200 pieces, each of which could be served by a single Point of Presence (although many IXCs did have multiple PoPs in larger LATAs). The LATA also became a convenient guideline for the 1996 Telecom 