Essential telecommunications service means a customer's access to service that is necessary for the origination or termination, or both, of two-way, switched telecommunications for both residential and business service within a local exchange area. Local private line. A line leased from a carrier, local or long distance. A non-switched circuit. One end of the line is directly connected to the other end.
Private networks comprise numbers of private lines.
Originally, private lines were, in fact, dedicated circuits which literally could be physically traced through the network. The line is a standard business line which goes around the Private Automatic Branch Exchange. It connects the user directly with the local exchange carrier central office, rather than going through the Private Branch Exchange. Additionally, private lines are not subject to congestion in the private branch exchange. As private lines also are not susceptible to catastrophic private branch exchange failure, they often are used to provide fail safe communications to key individuals with mission-critical responsibilities to data centers, network operations centers, and the like.