| CALEA |
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) became a law on January 1, 1995. Under this law, phone companies are required to provide law enforcement agencies with required call information about targeted callers. Besides, the law mandates that these agencies can also listen to calls made (or received) by suspect callers.
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| Call Deflection |
Call deflection is one of the features of call diversion in VoIP. It automatically diverts a call to an alternate destination, like voicemail, in case the intended destination is busy or on another line.
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| CDR (Call Detail Record) |
CDR contains information such as duration and billed amount about a call. CDR is generated automatically giving details of calls made within a given period.
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| Centrex |
A central communications facility for business users, a centrex supports advanced calling capabilities in addition to direct inward dialing and call transfer. A centrex also identifies the extension numbers from which long distance calls are made. It is based on switching equipment and has features similar to a PBX system.
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| Channel Bank |
A channel bank is critical to digital telecommunication. Every phone company has a central public exchange. The channel bank converts analog voice and data signals into digital signals that are then transmitted from the public exchange to other exchanges. The lines that connect the public exchange to other exchanges are high speed and accept digital signals. Each digital signal, also known as DSO, is transmitted at 64 Kbps. The signal is combined with other digital signals to be transmitted over the same circuit by a technique known as Time Division Multiplexing.
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| CIC (Carrier Identification Code) |
CIC is a numeric code assigned by the North American Numbering Plan to an administrator. The administrator uses the code to provision selected switched services. Every entity has a unique CIC, which is used by the service operator to route a call to a trunk group.
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| Clearinghouse |
A VoIP clearinghouse is a feature that enables a local Internet Telephony Service Provider to have a single point of access in its global network. It eliminates the need for multiple traffic sharing agreements with various service providers in various parts of the world.
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| CLEC |
Every region has an incumbent telephone exchange carrier or ILEC. These carriers install all equipment and wiring necessary for a telephone network in a region. In other words, they have monopoly over telecommunications in their target region. However, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 encouraged growth of additional carriers known as the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). The Telecommunications Act allows CLECs to use specific infrastructure from ILECs.
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| Codec |
With the use of mathematical formulas, compression-decompression defines processing power required, rate of voice compression and attributes of the decompressed speech. Commonly used VoIP codecs are ITU-T G.723.1 and G.729 (AB).
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| Compression |
The rate at which voice is compressed to be sent over a network is referred to as compression. Voice compression uses lesser bandwidth leaving some free for transfer of other types of data. High compression rates compromise voice quality.
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| CPC (Calling Party Control) |
CPC is a form of signaling that allows the call receiving party to know when the calling party has hung up. It is generally in the form of an open loop disconnect. It is a very important feature especially when communicating with voicemail or similar systems that need to know when the calling party hangs up.
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| CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) |
Equipment such as terminal, modem and related wiring that is essentially owned by either a telephone company or a service provider and is installed at the user end to connect them to the service provider. VoIP service can be implemented in two ways, either a CPE service or network-based hosted service (whereby the subscriber is not required to purchase, install, maintain or upgrade the equipment except IP phone in some cases).
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| CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access w |
The CSMA/CD is a network access technology that enables devices of Ethernet based LANs to check the channel for carrier availability before beginning to transmit data. A device transfers information in absence of a carrier. A collision occurs when two stations try to transmit at the same time and is resolved when a device transmits data after a random time interval.
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| CSU/DSU (Channel Service Unit/Digital Se |
A CSU and a DSU combine to form a device that is an essential part of any T1 or T3 telecommunications line. A CSU forms a connection between a terminal and a digital line. The DSU has a diagnostic and protective role for the line.
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| CTI (Computer Telephone Integration) |
The technology that helps combine telephony with computer systems. Computers handling calls in call centers or customer care departments are CTI implementations. Here, computers take incoming calls and route them appropriately depending on their call number and caller ID. CTI has replaced traditional PBXs with advanced systems aptly capable of handling incoming calls, outgoing messages, fax and online communication.
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