IntraLATA Rates

Often overlooked & misunderstood by most of us is the two tiered service arrangement for long distance service.  Two terms you’d better get to know, or at least understand are:

IntraLATA Calls - Local long distance calls or toll calls in and near your calling area.

InterLATA Calls - Long distance calls made to individuals outside your local calling area or state.

When you select your long distance service, you select carriers for these two different services, your InterLATA and your IntraLATA.  The InterLATA is what most of us think of when we think of long distance service.  It is synonymous with the term State-to-state.  The IntraLATA is commonly referred to as In-state Long Distance service.

Depending on who your calling from your home office, this subtle difference can be extremely important.  Particularly if you are unlucky enough to live in certain states, like New Jersey, and need to make a lot of  local long distance calls.  Calling someone only a dozen miles from your house can easily fall into the category of Local Long Distance.  The dreaded IntraLATA.

Why do I say dreaded, because it difficult to know & keep track of who is and who isn’t an IntraLATA call.  You see, the dirty little secret of the phone industry is that IntraLATA calls are almost always more expensive that InterLATA calls, usually somewhere between 50% to 150% more.

IntraLATA services can be provided by your local carrier, or your long distance service carrier.  If you do significant amounts of local long distance calling, be sure to check these rates when deciding on your provider.   

Beware:  Many times when dealing with your local phone company, even on issues not related to long distance service selection, they will try to talk you into switching to them for your IntraLATA calling, it’s a huge profit maker for them. 

Tip:  The use of many of the unlimited long distance plans, especially the ones offered by the use of VoIP services can dramatically lower the cost of “IntraLATA’ calling.