List of telephony terminology
A
- Advanced Intelligent Network, (AIN), see also IN or Intelligent Network
- Automatic number announcement circuit (ANAC)
- Automated Attendant
- ACD - Automatic Call Distribution
- Articulation score
B
- Blue box - a device that was used to bypass the normal long-distance call switching tones typically used to obtain free calls.
C
- Call originator - (or calling party, caller or A-party) a person or device that initiates a telephone call by dialling a telephone number.
- Call waiting - a system that notifies a caller of another incoming telephone call by sounding a sound in the earpiece.
- Called party - (or callee or B-party)
- Caller
- Calling party
- Conference call (multi-party call)
- COCOT
D
- Dial peer
- Dial tone
- Distribution frame
- Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF)
E
- Emergency telephone number
- End instrument
- Engset calculation
- Erlang unit
F
- Fax - (contraction of facsimile) a device connected to the telephone network to enable documents to be scanned and sent to a receiving fax machine
- Frame - A distribution frame, a set of open wiring racks where circuits are cross connected to trunks and equipment
H
- Handoff
- Handover
- Help desk
- Howler tone (see ROH tone)
- Hunt Group
I
- Infrastructure
- Intelligent Network (IN)
- Interface functionality
- Inside plant
- Intelligent Network Interface Device (iNID) - replaces the Network Interface Device outside a subscriber's house like when customers subscribe to AT&T's U-verse brand of services.
- Interactive voice response (IVR)
- ISDN User Part (ISUP)
L
O
P
- Patch-through access
- Permanent signal
- Person-to-person
- Plain old telephone service, or "POTS"
- Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)
- Pupinization
R
- Receiver Off-Hook tone (ROH)
- Red telephone box
- Red box
- Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC)
- Ringer equivalency number (REN)
- Ringing signal
- Rural radio service
S
T
- Tandem signaling
- Tandem switch
- Transaction Capabilities Application Part (TCAP)
- Telemarketing
- Telephone
- Telephone booth
- Telephone call
- Telephone card
- Telephone directory
- Telephone exchange
- Telephone tapping
- Teletraffic engineering
- Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)
- Trap and trace
- TWX
V
W
- Western Union
- Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS)
- WATS line
- Wireless network
- Wireless Telephony Applications Interface (WTAI)
- Wi-Fi
Z
Acronyms
- v
- t
- e
- Beacon
- Broadcasting
- Cable protection system
- Cable TV
- Communications satellite
- Computer network
- Data compression
- Digital media
- Drums
- Edholm's law
- Electrical telegraph
- Fax
- Heliographs
- Hydraulic telegraph
- Information Age
- Information revolution
- Internet
- Mass media
- Mobile phone
- Optical telecommunication
- Optical telegraphy
- Pager
- Photophone
- Prepaid mobile phone
- Radio
- Radiotelephone
- Satellite communications
- Semaphore
- Semiconductor
- Smoke signals
- Telecommunications history
- Telautograph
- Telegraphy
- Teleprinter (teletype)
- Telephone
- The Telephone Cases
- Television
- Undersea telegraph line
- Videotelephony
- Whistled language
- Wireless revolution
- Nasir Ahmed
- Edwin Howard Armstrong
- Mohamed M. Atalla
- John Logie Baird
- Paul Baran
- John Bardeen
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Emile Berliner
- Tim Berners-Lee
- Francis Blake (telephone)
- Jagadish Chandra Bose
- Charles Bourseul
- Walter Houser Brattain
- Vint Cerf
- Claude Chappe
- Yogen Dalal
- Daniel Davis Jr.
- Donald Davies
- Amos Dolbear
- Thomas Edison
- Lee de Forest
- Philo Farnsworth
- Reginald Fessenden
- Elisha Gray
- Oliver Heaviside
- Robert Hooke
- Erna Schneider Hoover
- Harold Hopkins
- Gardiner Greene Hubbard
- Internet pioneers
- Bob Kahn
- Dawon Kahng
- Charles K. Kao
- Narinder Singh Kapany
- Hedy Lamarr
- Innocenzo Manzetti
- Guglielmo Marconi
- Robert Metcalfe
- Antonio Meucci
- Samuel Morse
- Jun-ichi Nishizawa
- Charles Grafton Page
- Radia Perlman
- Alexander Stepanovich Popov
- Tivadar Puskás
- Johann Philipp Reis
- Claude Shannon
- Almon Brown Strowger
- Henry Sutton
- Charles Sumner Tainter
- Nikola Tesla
- Camille Tissot
- Alfred Vail
- Thomas A. Watson
- Charles Wheatstone
- Vladimir K. Zworykin
media
and switching
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