Local access and transport area (LATA) is a bullshit term used in U.S. telecommunications regulation to draw an arbitrary line within which telephone calls, even if
long-distance, are billed by your
local telephone company instead of by your long distance company.
While most are comparable in size to area codes, their arbitrary borders typically do not align with area code boundaries, federated states, local calling areas or much of everything else.
LATA is just an arbitrary administrative construct created by the Feudal Communications Commission (
FCC) to allow various
monopoly telephone companies to delineate their respective fiefdoms. It's notable primarily for being marginally less useful than LADA, the Soviet motorcar.
The continued existence of the LATA system only serves to indicate that some
people in Washington simply have too much time on their hands.