VoIP Terms

Auto-attendants are programs within a phone system that enables inbound callers to be routed to specific extensions without the need for speaking directly to an operator or receptionist.

Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) is a telephone company that competes with an incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) such as a Regional Bell Operating Company

Customer-premises equipment (CPE) is any terminal and equipment located at a business customer's premises and connected with a carrier's demarcation point ("demarc").

Direct Inward Dialing (DID) is a feature used with a company’s Private Automated Branch Exchange system (PBAX) whereby a telephone carrier assigns a range of telephone numbers associated with one or more phone lines.

Echo cancellation is the procedure for eliminating echoing from a phone call to improve the quality of the call. Echo cancellation is often required because voice compression and packet processing methodologies generate delays in transmission.

ENUM is a next generation engineering protocol that converge Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN) and the IP network. Taken literally, ENUM is defined as Telephone Number Mapping and correlates telephone numbers from the PSTN to an internet address via the DNS system.

FoIP is an acronym for Fax over IP and refers to the process of sending and receiving faxes over a VoIP enabled network.

An Integrated Access Device (IAD) is a customer premise device providing access to wide area networks and the Internet.

IP Phones are also referred to as VoIP telephones, SIP phones and softphones. All of these terminologies are synonymous and refer to the protocol which voice transmissions are delivered over the internet.

Integrated Service Digital Netowrk (ISDN) is a type of circuit offered by telecommunications companies to deliver digital transmission of voice and data packets over plain old telephone service (POTS) copper wires versus the traditional analog transmission.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a telecommunications system that allow callers to select options from a voice menu on demand and routs their calls accordingly.

Local area networks (LAN) are communications system that connect devices through Ethernet connections. Most LANs interconnect computers, servers and storage devices providing users the ability to share access to devices and data located on the LAN.

Private Business Exchange (PBX) is a telephone exchange owned by an organization or business entity versus one owned by a telecommunications carrier or telephone company.

Plain old telephone service (POTS) plain old telephone service, which refers to the standard telephone service that most homes use.

The Primary Rate Interface (PRI) is a standardized telecommunications service level within the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) specification for carrying multiple DS0 voice and data transmissions between a network and a user.

The Public Switched Telephone Network is the global community of public circuit-switched telephone networks making up all of the telephone lines, fiber optic cables, cellular networks.

RBOCs were originally known as Regional Holding Companies (RHCs). Currently, three companies have the RBOCs as predecessors. They are "The New" AT&T Inc., Verizon, and CenturyLink.

Session Initiation Protocol is an engineering protocol for VOIP and multimedia sessions such as video, chat, online gaming and other services.

Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is a method of transmitting and receiving independent signals over a common signal path by means of synchronized switches at each end of the transmission line so that each signal appears on the line only a fraction of time in an alternating pattern.

Unified communications (UC) is a telecommunications industry term describing the efforts of businesses and organizations to integrate their use of data, voice and video into a single supported product; the unified communications platform.

A voice mail system is part of a business or organizations telecommunications network that function to send, store and retrieve audio messages left in a voice mailbox.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that enables voice analog packets to be converted into data packets and transmitted over a data network.

A VOIP gateway (also called PSTN gateway) is a device that converts voice or analog traffic into data traffic for transmitting over a company or organizations LAN.