With the expansion of Voice over IP and cellular phone technologies over the past decade, it has never been more cheaper to call international phone numbers. A common barrier for consumers trying to call friends, family, or business contacts that live abroad is determining how to dial international phone numbers from your country. International Dialing …
Tethering means using a mobile phone (or any other Internet-capable device) as a modem for a laptop or other Internet capable units. A phone that can access the Internet is connected to the other device with a USB cable or Bluetooth connection. If a mobile plan allows the phone to be tethered, you can save …
Prepaid cell phones are mobile phones that are not associated with a long term contract and, therefore, do not incur the overage charges and late fees associate with contract plans. Prepaid cell phones are paid before the mobile service is activated on a monthly or “pay-as-you-go” basis and are deactivated when the service term expires …
A PIN, or Personal Identification Number, is a number that is used on some SIM cards to prevent unauthorized use of the cell phone it is located in. PINs are not used by all SIM cards and may need to be setup before they can be used. A PIN is generally between 4 and 8 …
An IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity, number is a number associated with a specific cell phone and can be used by authorities in a wide variety of countries to blacklist stolen cell phones, making them unusable to the thief, even if he/she replaces the phone’s SIM card. An IMEI number should not be confused …
TL1 (Transaction Language 1) is an element management protocol used primarily in the telecommunications industry. TL1 was designed by Bellcore (now Telecordia) in 1984 for use with its OSS (Operations Support System), NMA. TL1 is an MML (Man Machine Language), which means that TL1 messages should be readable and writeable by humans as well as …
RBOC (The Regional Bell Operating Companies) were created as the result of a legal dispute between the US Justice Department and the AT & T Corporation. In 1984, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company split its local operations into 7 autonomous RBOCs that became known as “Baby Bells”. In the beginning, these companies were called …
GoPhone is the trademark used by AT&T/Cingular to market their pay as you go cell phones. Most customers will eventually want to switch to a more normal post-pay cell phone plan, and many of them will want to take their cell phones with them. Unfortunately, the GoPhones are "subsidy locked." This means that the GoPhones …
What is Ground Start? Ground Start or GST is a signaling technique for telephony from a terminal, or a subscriber local loop, to a telephone exchange in which a party gets a dial tone by momentarily grounding one side of a (telephone) circuit. The Ring side of a wire pair is usually the side that …
MiFi stands for “My Wi-Fi” or “Mobile Wi-Fi”, and represents a line of relatively small wireless routers developed by Novatel Wireless, which turn a mobile broadband internet connection into a Wi-Fi hotspot. These hotspots support up to 5 Wi-Fi enabled devices within a range of 10 meters. This means that any Wi-Fi enabled device, from …