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Interexchange Carrier
An interexchange carrier (IXC), in U.S. legal and regulatory terminology, is a type of telecommunication company, commonly called a long-distance telephone company. It is defined as any carrier that provides services across multiple local access and transport areas (interLATA). Calls made on telephone circuits within the local geographic area covered by one local network are handled only by that intraLATA carrier, commonly called a local telephone exchange carrier. Local calls are usually defined by connections made without additional charge whether the connected call is in the same LATA or connects to another LATA with no charge. IntraLATA usually refers to rated or toll calls between LATA within state boundaries, as opposed to interstate, or calls between LATAs in different states. Call handling An interexchange carrier handles traffic between telephone exchanges. Telephone exchanges are identified in the United States by the three-digit area code (NPA) and the central office p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that feasible with the human voice, but with a similar scale of expediency; thus, slow systems (such as postal mail) are excluded from the field. The transmission media in telecommunication have evolved through numerous stages of technology, from beacons and other visual signals (such as smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs), to electrical cable and electromagnetic radiation, including light. Such transmission paths are often divided into communication channels, which afford the advantages of multiplexing multiple concurrent communication sessions. ''Telecommunication'' is often used in its plural form. Other examples of pre-modern long-distance communication included audio messages, such as coded drumb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feature Group
A feature group, in North American telephone industry jargon, is most commonly used to designate various standard means of access by callers to competitive long-distance services. They defined switching arrangements from local exchange carriers central offices to interexchange carriers. These arrangements were described in an official tariff of the National Exchange Carrier Association, filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While there are other feature groups for local access, the four common feature groups exist for access from the local subscriber to competitive long-distance carriers: ; Feature Group A: The original implementation, in which a user has to dial the local telephone number of a provider's gateway, followed by (usually) a password, then the desired long-distance number. There is a different local access number in each local calling area. This requires no special capability at the local telephone company office as competing long-distance provide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephone Slamming
Telephone slamming is an illegal telecommunications practice, in which a subscriber's telephone service is changed without their consent. Slamming became a more visible issue after the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the mid-1980s, especially after several price wars between the major telecommunications companies. The term ''slamming'' was coined by Mick Ahearn, who was a consumer marketing manager at AT&T in September 1987. The inspiration for the term came from the ease at which a competitor could switch a customer's service away from AT&T by falsely notifying a telephone company that an AT&T customer had elected to switch to their service. This process gave AT&T's competitors a "slam dunk" method for the unauthorized switching of a customer's long-distance service. The term ''slamming'' became an industry standard term for this practice. Variations of this concept include "merchant account slamming" or "credit card processing slamming" in which a business ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long-distance Calling
In telecommunications, a long-distance call (U.S.) or trunk call (also known as a toll call in the U.K. ) is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area. Long-distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate than local calls. The term is not necessarily synonymous with placing calls to another telephone area code. Long-distance calls are classified into two categories: national or domestic calls which connect two points within the same country, and international calls which connect two points in different countries. Within the United States there is a further division into long-distance calls within a single state (intrastate) and interstate calls, which are subject to different regulations (counter-intuitively, calls within states are usually more expensive than interstate calls). Not all interstate calls are long-distance calls. Since 1984 there has also been a distinction between intra-local access and transport area (LATA) calls and those ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
10-10-321
10-10-321 is a United States long-distance phone service best known for its prolific television and direct mail advertising in the late 1990s. 10-10-321 was the first mass-marketed service of its type, and it and the similar 10-10-220 and 10-10-987 services were all owned by Telecom USA, which was owned by MCI; MCI is now part of Verizon. All services of its kind are known as interexchange carriers, which essentially allow consumers to bypass, or "dial-around" their primary long-distance carrier and use a different one. History The services debuted in May 1996, originally as 10-321 (and its numerous variants) before the telephone industry expanded carrier access codes to seven digits instead of the original five; the number gained an additional "10", becoming 10-10-321 on July 1, 1998. Although "dial-around" interexchange carriers existed prior to the debut of 10-10-321, these were among the first to feature a mass multimedia advertising campaign. The services were advertised heav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephone Fraud
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers. Many operators have increased measures to minimize fraud and reduce their losses. Communications operators tend to keep their actual loss figures and plans for corrective measures confidential. According to a 2011 survey by CFCA, an industry group created to reduce fraud against carriers, the five top fraud loss categories reported by operators were: * US$4.96 billion – compromised PBX/voicemail systems * $4.32 billion – subscription/identity theft * $3.84 billion – International Revenue Share Fraud * $2.88 billion – by-pass fraud * $2.40 billion – cash fraud Types of frauds Fraud against users by phone companies * '' Cramming'' is the addition of charges to a subscriber's telephone bill for services which were neither ordered nor desired by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cramming (fraud)
Cramming is a form of fraud in which small charges are added to a bill by a third party without the subscriber's consent, approval, authorization or disclosure. These may be disguised as a tax, some other common fee or a bogus service, and may be several dollars or even just a few cents. The crammer's intent is that the subscriber will overlook and ultimately pay these small charges without them knowing what it's all about. According to the U.S. National Association of Attorneys General, cramming was the 4th most common consumer complaint of 2007 in the United States. Types There are various forms of cramming. Phone cramming Phone cramming is the practice of placing unauthorized charges on a telecommunication subscriber's home or mobile telephone bill. Cramming is most common in the US, where the breakup of the Bell System left subscribers with different vendors for local and long-distance service. LEC billing consolidated charges from multiple vendors on one bill, but open ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephone Slamming
Telephone slamming is an illegal telecommunications practice, in which a subscriber's telephone service is changed without their consent. Slamming became a more visible issue after the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the mid-1980s, especially after several price wars between the major telecommunications companies. The term ''slamming'' was coined by Mick Ahearn, who was a consumer marketing manager at AT&T in September 1987. The inspiration for the term came from the ease at which a competitor could switch a customer's service away from AT&T by falsely notifying a telephone company that an AT&T customer had elected to switch to their service. This process gave AT&T's competitors a "slam dunk" method for the unauthorized switching of a customer's long-distance service. The term ''slamming'' became an industry standard term for this practice. Variations of this concept include "merchant account slamming" or "credit card processing slamming" in which a business ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP has the task of delivering packets from the source host to the destination host solely based on the IP addresses in the packet headers. For this purpose, IP defines packet structures that encapsulate the data to be delivered. It also defines addressing methods that are used to label the datagram with source and destination information. IP was the connectionless datagram service in the original Transmission Control Program introduced by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in 1974, which was complemented by a connection-oriented service that became the basis for the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The Internet protocol suite is therefore often referred to as ''TCP/IP''. The first major version of IP, Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), is the do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Access And Transport Area
Local access and transport area (LATA) is a term used in U.S. telecommunications regulation. It represents a geographical area of the United States under the terms of the Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) entered by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Civil Action number 82-0192 or any other geographic area designated as a LATA in the National Exchange Carrier Association, Inc. Tariff FCC No. 4. that precipitated the breakup of the original AT&T into the "Baby Bells" or created since that time for wireline regulation. Generally, a LATA represents an area within which a divested Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) is permitted to offer exchange telecommunications and exchange access services. Under the terms of the MFJ, the RBOCs are generally prohibited from providing services that originate in one LATA and terminate in another. LATA boundaries tend to be drawn around markets, and not necessarily along existing state or area code borders. So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landline
A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses radio waves for signal transmission. Characteristics A corded landline telephone made by Siemens from c. 1997 Landline service is typically provided through the outside plant of a telephone company's central office, or wire center. The outside plant comprises tiers of cabling between distribution points in the exchange area, so that a single pair of copper wire, or an optical fiber, reaches each subscriber location, such as a home or office, at the network interface. Customer premises wiring extends from the network interface to the location of one or more telephones inside the premises. The telephone connected to a landline can be hard-wired or cordless and typically refers to the operation of wireless devices or systems in fixed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ITSP
An Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) offers digital telecommunications services based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that are provisioned via the Internet. ITSPs provide services to end-users directly or as whole-sale suppliers to other ITSPs. ITSPs use a variety of signaling and multimedia protocols, including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), Megaco, and the H.323 protocol. H.323 is one of the earliest VoIP protocols, but its use is declining and it is rarely used for consumer products. Retail customers of an ITSP may use traditional analog telephone sets attached to an analog telephony adapter (ATA) to connect to the service provider's network via a local area network, they may use an IP phone, or they may connect a private branch exchange (PBX) system to the service via media gateways. ITSPs are also known as voice service providers (VSP). History In the United States, net2Phone began offering consumer VoIP se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
