Telecom Professional Qualification key terms

A non-binding international standard published by the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Sector, defining interfaces, protocols, or performance targets so equipment from different vendors and operators can interoperate worldwide.

A technical standard produced by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, the body that writes the detailed mobile system specifications behind GSM, UMTS, LTE, and 5G NR releases used by vendors and operators.

The set of measurable performance commitments for a traffic stream, such as delay, jitter, loss, and throughput, plus the mechanisms a network uses to keep those commitments under congestion.

A contract between a provider and a customer that states measurable service targets, such as availability, latency, or repair time, and the remedies owed when those targets are missed.

A quantifiable metric an operator tracks to judge network or service health, for example call setup success rate, handover success rate, or mean time to repair, usually with a target threshold and reporting period.

The average elapsed time needed to restore a failed service or component to normal operation, calculated across incidents; a core availability metric used in fault management and SLA reporting.

A seven-layer reference framework describing how networked applications communicate, from physical signalling up through data link, network, transport, and application functions, used to reason about protocol boundaries and troubleshooting.

The connectionless packet-routing protocol that carries addressing and fragmentation information so datagrams can travel across interconnected networks; IPv4 and IPv6 are the two deployed versions.

A connection-oriented transport protocol that establishes sessions, sequences bytes, acknowledges receipt, retransmits lost data, and applies flow and congestion control to deliver a reliable byte stream.

A connectionless transport protocol that sends datagrams without handshakes, acknowledgements, or retransmission, giving low overhead and low latency at the cost of possible loss, duplication, or reordering.

An addressing and routing scheme that uses variable-length prefix notation, such as 192.0.2.0/24, instead of fixed address classes, allowing efficient allocation of address blocks and summarised routing entries.

The inter-domain routing protocol that exchanges reachability information between autonomous systems, selecting paths using policy attributes such as AS-path length, local preference, and MED rather than pure hop count.

A group of IP networks and routers managed by one administrative entity under a single routing policy, identified by a unique number and used as the unit of inter-domain routing on the Internet.

A routing protocol, such as OSPF or IS-IS, used inside a single autonomous system to distribute topology and reachability information so routers can compute shortest paths within that domain.

A technique that rewrites source or destination IP addresses and ports as packets cross a boundary, letting many private hosts share few public addresses and hiding internal addressing from outside networks.

A standard optical transport hierarchy that multiplexes plesiochronous and other signals into synchronous frames with defined overhead bytes, enabling managed, protected, and precisely timed transmission at rates such as STM-1 and STM-16.

An optical technique that carries many independent signals simultaneously on closely spaced wavelengths within one fibre, multiplying capacity without laying new cable and often paired with optical amplifiers.

A fibre access architecture in which a single optical line terminal feeds many subscribers through unpowered splitters, using shared downstream broadcast and scheduled upstream bursts; GPON and XGS-PON are common variants.

The operator-side endpoint of a passive optical network that aggregates subscriber traffic, manages optical network units, enforces upstream scheduling, and connects the access network to the core.

The subscriber-side device in a passive optical network that terminates the fibre link, converts optical signals to electrical service interfaces, and reports upstream traffic under the OLT's scheduling control.

A copper access technology that uses wide frequency bands and vectoring to deliver high speeds over short loops from a cabinet or exchange, typically deployed alongside fibre to the cabinet.

An umbrella term for access architectures that push optical fibre varying distances toward the subscriber, such as to the cabinet, building, or home, with copper or in-building wiring covering any remaining span.

A resilience mechanism that automatically moves traffic to a standby path, link, or equipment unit within a defined time when the working resource fails, preserving service continuity in transport networks.

The 5G radio interface defined by 3GPP, supporting flexible subcarrier spacing, wide channel bandwidths, massive antenna arrays, and both sub-6 GHz and millimetre-wave deployments with service-based quality handling.

The 3GPP fourth-generation radio and core system using an all-IP architecture, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access on the downlink, and scalable bandwidths, forming the basis for later 5G non-standalone deployment.

The all-IP core network of LTE that separates control-plane signalling from user-plane forwarding and provides mobility anchoring, session management, and policy control for mobile data services.

The creation of multiple logically isolated virtual networks on shared infrastructure, each tuned for different requirements such as latency, throughput, or reliability, so one physical network serves distinct service classes.

An architecture that runs network functions as software on general-purpose servers instead of dedicated appliances, improving scaling, deployment speed, and resource sharing through virtualised infrastructure management.

An approach that separates the network's control logic from its forwarding hardware, letting a central controller program traffic handling across devices through open interfaces rather than per-device configuration.

Placing compute and storage close to the radio access network so applications can respond with very low latency and reduced backhaul load, typically hosted at base stations or local aggregation sites.

A low-power wide-area cellular standard for infrequent, small-payload machine traffic, offering deep indoor coverage, long battery life, and high connection density within a narrow carrier bandwidth.

A regulatory authorisation granting an operator exclusive or shared rights to use specified radio frequencies in a defined area for a period, usually subject to technical conditions, fees, and coverage obligations.

A competitive assignment mechanism in which the regulator sells rights to use frequency bands, designed to allocate scarce spectrum efficiently while raising revenue and discouraging hoarding.

Reassigning or replanning frequencies currently used by one service or technology so they can carry a different use, such as moving legacy mobile bands to newer generations or releasing them for broadband.

A regulatory duty requiring designated operators to provide basic telecommunications services at affordable prices to all users, including remote or uneconomic areas, often funded through a shared mechanism.

The commercial and technical arrangement by which one operator's network exchanges traffic with another's, including points of interconnection, capacity, charging basis, and quality commitments, typically regulated to ensure fair access.

A regulatory requirement letting subscribers keep their telephone number when changing operator, location, or service type, implemented through central reference databases and routing queries.

A packet format for carrying audio and video over IP, supplying sequence numbers, timestamps, and payload type information so receivers can detect loss and compensate for jitter.

Deliberately delaying or buffering packets to keep a flow within a committed rate or to smooth bursts, unlike policing, which simply discards traffic that exceeds the allowed profile.

The operational process of detecting, isolating, diagnosing, and correcting network problems, supported by alarms, event correlation, and ticketing so that service impact is minimised and documented.