Telecommunications History & Policy into the 21st Century

Glossary of Terms

211 Glossary of Terms Central Office: CO. (se ˉ o ˉ.) In the United States, this typically means a telephone company building where subscribers’ lines are joined to switching equipment for connecting subscribers to each other and also to long distance providers. The European term would be a public exchange . CLEC: Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. A CLEC is a new or competitive local phone company whose existence was made possible via the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which created the concept and term. The opposite of a CLEC would be an ILEC or Incumbent Local Exchange Company. Collect Call: A telephone call in which the called person pays for the call. Direct Distance Dialing: DDD is a telephone service that lets a user dial long-distance calls directly to telephones outside the user’s local service area without operator assistance. E.164: Is the ITU-T recommendation for GSTN (Global Switched Telephone Network) numbering. It is basically a sixteen-digit numbering standard that provides a unique telephone number for every subscriber in the world. ENUM: ENUM is a proposal to map all phone numbers to IP addresses. The format for telephone numbers is specified in the ITU-T E.164 standard and the formats for URLs, IPv4, and IPv6 address are standardized by the IETF. 212 Telecommunications History & Policy Equal Access: A term that came about at the time of divestiture. It provided that all long-distance common carriers must have Equal Access for their long-distance caller customers. City-by-city telephone subscribers were asked to choose their primary carrier, whom they would reach by dialing 1 before their long-distance number. All other carriers (including AT&T, if not chosen as primary) were reached by dialing a five-digit code (10XXX), thus providing Equal Access for all carriers. FiOS: FiOS or Fiber Optic System refers to Verizon’s proprietary Fiber to the premise service. Horizontal Integration: A business strategy wherein an organization seeks to increase market share by selling the same or a similar product chain in multiple markets. Horizontal integration often occurs when a firm in the same industry and in the same stage of production is taken over or merges with another firm that is in the same industry and at the same stage of production (e.g., a car manufacturer merging with another car manufacturer). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_ integration IETF: Internet Engineering Task Force. Formed in 1986 when the Internet was evolving from a Defense Department experiment into an academic network, the IETF is one of two technical working bodies of the Internet Activities Board. Comprised entirely of volunteers, the IETF meets several times a year to set the technical standards that run the Internet. Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier: ILEC. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 created the concept and term. Basically, an ILEC was an incumbent telephone company and had always had a protected geographic area within which, there was no competition for local telephone service. However the Act allowed for new or competitive local phone companies called CLECs. The opposite of an ILEC would be a CLEC. All RBOCs were ILECs but not all ILECs are RBOCs. ILECs are in competition with competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). Glossary of Terms 213 Independent Telephone Company: A telephone company not affiliated with one of the “Bell” telephone companies. There were once over 1,400 independent telephone companies. The independent phone companies used to be represented by the United States Independent Telephone Association (USITA). Once divestiture happened, the association dropped the word “Independent” from its name, accepted membership of the Bell operating companies (but not AT&T) and the organization became USTA. Note: Independent Telephone Companies are ILECs, but they may also create a subsidiary to provide telephone services outside of their traditional geographical territory in order to provide competitive telephone services there. If they did this, they would also be considered a CLEC in those areas outside of their traditional geographic territory. Intelligent Network: IN. This is an ITU-T concept designed to bring about a more efficient and easier method of providing advanced services to the public switched telephone network. IN and now, Advanced IN provide for such services as toll free service and the advanced features that are available within this service, custom calling features and number portability. SS7 in conjunction with software modules provide the intelligence. Internet Protocol: IP. Part of the TCP/IP family of protocols describing software that tracks the Internet address of nodes...