Pretty much, yeah. For a CLEC, interconnecting in any given LATA[1] is a complex and costly endeavour—I mean the actual interconnecting, not opting into an int

Pretty much, yeah. For a CLEC, interconnecting in any given LATA[1] is a complex and costly endeavour—I mean the actual interconnecting, not opting into an interconnection agreement (ICA) for one purpose or another. CLECs are not beholden to any universal service obligations or similar social policy objectives, and will only connect in higher-density metro-type markets in which there is profit in doing so. The business case has to be there, and that generally comes in the form of downstream VoIP service providers having customer demand in that area. So, hyper-rural folks are deeply out of luck. We deal with this scenario all the time in my line of work: "hey, anyone know someone who can port a number in this $LOCAL_YOKEL territory out in $NEVER_HEARD_OF_IT?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_access_and_transport_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_access_and_transport_are...