In the telecom space we swim in acronyms. Here are the most common ones.

ACD = Average Call Duration – is the average length of telephone calls transmitted on a telecommunication network.

ANI = Automatic Number Identification – a feature of telecommunications network for automatically determining the origination telephone number on toll calls for billing purposes.

ASR = Answer-Seizure Ratio – completion rate or the percentage of telephone calls which are answered, which is a measure of the network quality and call success rate.

AVP = Attribute Value Pairs – these variables are used in the routing script.

BPO = Business process outsourcing – the practice of contracting a specific work process or processes to an external service provider. The services can include payroll, accounting, telemarketing, data recording, social media marketing, customer support and more.

CDR = Call Detail Records – data record that documents information about calls made over a phone service. A CDR report can give exact answers about where, when and how calls are made.

CPS = Calls per Second – refers to how many simultaneous connections are created per second.

DB = Data Binding – the switch’s local copy of all data cached from the reporting manager (RM) every minute.

DNIS = Dialed Number Identification Service – the telephone service that acts as an identifier for the receiver of a call. It is the number that is dialed. This is a common feature of 800 and 900 lines.

LCR = Least Cost Routing – the best path for outbound phone calls (also known as termination) based on the lowest available cost for the route between the caller and the destination.

MOU = Minutes of Usage – average communication time per one month per one user. It’s a metric used to compute billing and/or statistics for telephone calls or other network usage.

NAT = Network Address Translation/Translator – a method of remapping an IP address space into another by modifying network address information while in transit across a traffic routing device.

NPA/NXX = numbering plan area (NPA), which is the area code + three digits of a phone number immediately following the area code (NXX), which is also called the “exchange” or “central switching office designation.”

PDD = Post Dial Delay – how long it takes for a calling party to hear a ring-back tone after initiating a call.

PRV = Predictive Routing Value – the process of using known historical behavior of each customer as it relates to each vendor and then using that scoring system to determine the optimal routing order.

PSTN = Public Switched Telephone Network – the aggregate of the world’s circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by telephony operators.

RespOrg = a company that maintains the registration for individual toll-free telephone numbers in the distributed Service Management System / 800 database.

RM = Reporting Manager – the main database component which contains all customer data and reporting data generated from call detail records (CDR) processing.

RVM = Ringless Voicemail – also known as direct-to-voicemail – is a technology that allows telemarketers and businesses to “drop” voicemails directly into a consumer’s telephone voicemail.

SDP = Session Description Protocol – a standard for defining the parameters for the exchange of media (often streaming media) between two endpoints.

SDR = Short Duration Ratio – the percentage of calls that are less than 6 seconds in duration.

SIP = Session Initiation Protocol – a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining and terminating real-time sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications.

TCP = Transmission Control Protocol – a standard that defines how to establish and maintain a network conversation through which application programs can exchange data. TCP works with the internet protocol (IP), which defines how computers send packets of data to each other.

TLS = Transport Layer Security – a cryptographic protocol used for secure computer network communication.

TM = Traffic Manager – handles the routing logic for switching. The traffic switch (TS) sends the query to teh TM which sends back the routing choice.

TS = Traffic Switch – handles the main logic for switching. The load balancer (LB) passes traffic to the TS after initial authentication. All signaling is handled by this component.

UDP = User Datagram Protocol – a communications protocol that facilitates the exchange of messages between computing devices in a network. It’s an alternative to the transmission control protocol (TCP). It is sometimes referred to as UDP/IP.