The long distance market can be categorized into three major tiers. The largest companies, including AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and (more recently) LDDS Worldcom, rely heavily on advertising and promotions to market to business and residential customers. All four firms offer high-quality national networks, and can provide service to almost any location in the U.S. In addition, these firms offer a wide variety of sophisticated telecommunication services.

A second tier of carriers consists of large telecommunication carriers that do not offer the breadth of service of the big four. Carriers such as Frontier, Cable and Wireless, and LCI typically utilize a combination of proprietary installations and leased networks installed lines to carry traffic.

In terms of marketing, these companies often turn to direct promotion rather than large advertising budgets to build their customer base.

The second tier carriers tend to offer all the same services as the largest firms, but may not be able to efficiently provide large-scale telecommunication services.

A third tier of companies consist of many smaller firms with a more regional or local focus. These firms almost always lease their network capacity from the largest carriers, and are known as resellers. Regional firms often rely on alliances or local sales reps to attract customers, with some of the fastest growing firms using multi-level marketing arrangements to quickly build a customer base. Although these firms tend to offer decent line quality, they tend not to offer many of the added services a business may require.

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