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Technical Glossaries

The modern world of telecommunications is full of technical jargon and acronyms. Hopefully the following links will help you to understand the industry terminology and to distinguish between your bits and your backbone!

African Cellular - Glossary This site focuses upon the mobile industry and its glossary provides a good resource for this sector and the telecoms industry more generally.

FCC's Glossary of Telecommunications Terms This consists of about 40 pages and is easy to print out.

OFTEL Glossary A good resource from the UK regulator.

Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) This site provides both a glossary (with over 230 terms) and a list of telecom acronyms (with over 2,300 entries)

Telecommunications Managers' Association (TMA) Guide to Preferred Terms This 'jargon buster' as they have called it claims to offer a simple and straightforward list of the technical expressions within the industry. A search facility allows you to look for items under the following headings: standards, abbreviations and glossary of terms. In contrast to most of the glossaries available on-line, though, it does not seem possible to see the whole list all at once (for example, to print it out). This is perhaps because there is also a book of the same name available for purchase.