B

Backbone
     A high-capacity network of broadband connections between switches.

Ballot
    A release form that authorizes a customer's long-distance phone service to be switched to
    (another) long-distance carrier, or  reseller.

BAN - Billing Account Number
    Used by telephone companies to designate a billing account, i.e., a customer or customer
    location that receives a bill. A  customer may have any number of BANs.

Bandwidth
    A measure of the communication capacity or data transmission rate of a circuit. The total
    frequency spectrum (in Hertz -  cycles per second) that is allocated or available to a channel,
    or the amount of data that can be carried (in bits per second)  by a channel.

Base Rate
     The non discounted "per minute" charge for Measured Service.

Basic Rate Interface - BRI
    ISDN offering that allows 2 64 Kbps and 1 16 Kbps channels to be carried over 1 typical single
    pair of copper wires. This is the  type of service that would be used to connect a small branch
    or home office to a remote network. Through the use of  BONDING (Bandwidth on Demand) the
    two 64 Kbps channels can be combined to create more bandwidth as it becomes  necessary.
    3 digital signals over a single pair of copper wires: 2 voice (B) channels and 1 signaling (D) channel.
    (e.g. voice and fax on a single pair of wires)  Currently ELI does not sell this service.

Batch Oriented
     A system that groups input into "batches" and processes them periodically (rather than in real-time).

Baud
    The number of signaling elements that can be transmitted per second on a circuit. e.g. When a
    modem is used to send  digital information on an analog line, baud refers to the speed that the circuit
    can change from the tone used to represent a  binary zero to the tone used to represent a binary one
    (or vice versa). In an average data stream, one baud is roughly  equivalent to one bit per second on a
    digital transmission circuit. (This is an older term being replaced by bps - bits per  second.)

B Channel - Bearer Channel
    Message bearing 64 Kbps digital channel specified in the ISDN standards, and used for digital
    transmission of speech,  freeze-frame video and data.  Can be circuit switched or packet switched.

Bell Customer Code
    A three-digit numeric code, appended to the end of the Main Billing Telephone Number, that is
    used by Local Exchange  Carriers to provide unique identification of customers.

Bell Operating Company - BOC
    The local (or regional) telephone company that owns and operates lines to customer locations
    and Class 5 Central Office  Switches. BOCs have connections to other COs, Tandem (Class 4 Toll)
    offices and may connect directly to IECs like  AT&T, MCI, Sprint, WorldCom, etc. BOC may refer to
    the nineteen Bell Operating Companies that are owned by the seven  RHCs (Regional Holding Companies)
    (not including Cincinnati Bell or Southern New England Telephone). The BOC role was  originally defined
    by the 1982 Modified Final Judgment that specified the terms of the AT&T Divestiture). For Example,
    the  three BOCs: Mountain Bell, Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell are owned by the
    U.S. West RHC. Each BOC may  service more than one LATA, but BOCs are generally constrained
    from providing long distance service between LATAs.

Beta Test
     A secondary product test performed by a selected set of "early support" end user(s) or customer(s)
    (under special contract)  prior to the general availability of the product.

Bill
     Notice of charges for products and services rendered

BICSI - Building Industries Consulting Service International
    A non-profit professional association for those engaged in voice\data cable plant design and
    installation. Administers the  Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD) and LAN
    Specialist certifications and provides related training.

BISDN - Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network
    A packet switching technique which uses packets of fixed length, resulting in lower processing
    and higher speeds. Also see  ATM or Cell RelaY.  In ISDN, a high-speed network standard that
    evolved narrowband ISDN with existing and new services with voice, data and video in the same
    network.

BISUP - Broadband ISDN User's Part
    A SS7 protocol which defines the signaling messages to control connections and services.

Bit
    The smallest amount of information that can be transmitted. In binary digital transmission, a bit has
    one of two values: 0 or 1.  A combination of bits can indicate an alphabetic character, a numeric digit,
    or perform a signaling, switching or other function.
 
Bit Error Rate - BER
    The rate at which errors occur in a stream of transmitted data. The BER may be expressed in terms
    of a percentage of  error-free seconds or as a percentage of error-free bits.

Block Calls
    Prevent calls from completing to the requested destination. May be due to network problems
    (outage, overload, etc.), or by  customer request (e.g. block calls from-or-to certain NPAs,
    NXXs, States, LATAs, etc.).

Bong
     An interactive signal that prompts the originating end user to enter additional information.

Bottleneck
     A system capacity constraint that may reduce traffic during peak load conditions.

bps
     bps - bits per second (upper/lower case is significant)

BPS
     Bps - (8-bit) bytes per second

Bridge
    A LAN internetworking device or setup that filters and passes data between two network segments
    (LANs), based on the destination field information in the packet header. Bridges do not use any
    routing algorithms.

Broadband
    A high-capacity communications circuit/path. A term describing any network that multiplexes
    multiple, independent network  carrier frequencies on to a single cable. It usually implies a speed
    greater than 1.544Mbps

Broadband Connection Oriented Bearer - BCOB
    Information in the SETUP message that indicates the type of service requested by the calling user.
    Used in ATM for  multiple Classes  (i.e. BCOB-A,  BCOB-C, BCOB-X).

Brouter
    A term used by some vendors, normally referring to a bridge also having some of the characteristics
    of a router.

BTN - Billing Telephone Number
     The phone number associated, for billing purposes, with the Working Phone Number.

Bundling
    A combined pricing of hardware, software and related services.  OR  The pricing of a group of
    components or elements of a communications product or service, so that the customer may choose
    the group of items at a less expensive price than if the components were chosen separately.

Bursty -- Batchy
    Communications characterized by high volumes of data transmitted intermittently, as opposed to
    steady-stream data.

Butt-set, butt-in, buttinski
    Hand-carried test telephone used to monitor, dial, and talk on conventional analog telephone lines.
    So named because the  craft person could clip onto a wire pair and "butt in" to a conversation.

Bypass Service
    The use of facilities other than those of the LEC (Facilities Bypass) or the use of operating telephone
    company private lines  (Service Bypass) to connect a customer premise to a PoP or another customer
    premise.

Byte
    A set of bits that represent a single character.  Usually there are 8 bits in a byte - sometimes more
    depending on how the measurement is being made. The ASCII standard is seven information bits and
    one parity bit for error checking.