Telecommunications
Term: Customer Premise Equipment
Customer Premise Equipment This term in actuality does make some sense. It’s equipment that is located on the site of the customer (usually referenced to by the Telecommunications Carrier, Voice or Data). This could be equipment that is owned by the carrier or, more commonly, owned by the customer. Depending on who owns the equipment [...]
Acronym: RBOC
ROBC – Regional Bell Operating Company. With the divesture of ATT in 1984, seven regional companies, also called “Baby Bells” were formed to supply local telephone service with ATT as the Long-Distance Carrier. These seven companies were; Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis (also known as Pacific Bell), Southwestern Bell and US West. Not [...]
Term: Loop Back
Loop Back This is a method of performing transmission tests on a circuit, not requiring the assistance of personnel at the distant end. This happens when a signal in sent from a central communications device (usually at the carrier’s central office) and returned to it in a way to determine correct operation of the circuit [...]
Acronyms – What do they mean?
Many times just knowing what the acronym means gives one an idea of its purpose and how it’s used. Here is a list of some telecommunications acronyms. Telephony Acronyms: ACD (Automatic Call Director) CDR (Call Detail Recording) CLID (Calling Line IDentifaction) CSU/DSU (Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit) DNIS (Dialed Number Identification Service) ISDN (Integrated Services [...]
Inventory Control – Do You Know What You Have?
Over time it’s amazing to see how much technology equipment a business can purchase. Do you know everything that you have? Do you know how old it is? Do you have a maintenance contract on something you took out of service months ago? These are all valid question, and some of you may be surprised [...]
Term: The Last Mile
Term: The Last Mile In very few cases the the last portion of a circuit is brought into the building by the Local Carrier. This is often termed the last mile. While they are responsible of that portion of the circuit, they are not responsible to you, but the carrier from which you ordered the [...]
Acronym: DNIS
DNIS – Dialed Number Identification Service This telecommunications feature delivers the telephone number that the caller dialed to the answering point. It’s a common feature used with 800 numbers. It can work by passing touch-tones digits or data information to equipment on the receiving end and can display the called number to an answering clerk, [...]
Acronym: MPOP
MPOP – Minimum Point of Presence. I’ve also seen it listed as Minimum Point of Penetration. This is the point where a telecommunication provider will deliver their service. In most residential services this point is outside of the house at a NID (Network Interface Device)., Many times in Multi-family complexes such as apartments it may [...]
Term: Multiplexing
The process of combining a number of individual channels into a common stream for transmission.
Acronym: TN
This one isn’t easy. A lot of it may depend on the reason it is being used. In many cases it stands for Telephone Number. If working with a multiplex it could mean Time slot Number. If using a Nortel PBX it stands for Terminal Number. It could also be used to mean Telecommunications Network [...]
