Glosario De Telecomunicaciones

The Hitchhiker’s Guide


To Rural Telecom

Don’t panic!








[pic]
1998


Rural Telecommunications Glossary


Why this Glossary?

This Glossary has been created by the TeleCommons Development Group (www.telecommons.com) to help you navigate the brave new world of information technologies for rural telecom. We know that information and communication technologiesare evolving at such a rapid rate that this Glossary will be continually outdated. Nonetheless, we consider this a beginning.

Please communicate with us at info@telecommons.com to submit your recommended submissions to a hand-book which we are in the process of developing to help rural development practitioners find their way through these uncharted territories.

The final version will bepublished soon. Consult our web site – www.telecommons.com for notice of availability of the completed version.

The TeleCommons Development Group is a Canadian company dedicated to the application of information and communication technologies for rural development – wherever you may be located on this planet.

TeleCommons Development Group
512 Woolwich St., Suite 200
Guelph, Ontario
N1H 3X7Canada

Tel 519-821-5787
Fax 519-837-9883
info@telecommons.com
www.telecommons.com



Acknowledgements:

Much of the information in this Glossary has been adapted from a Telecommunication Dictionary created by the Wawatay Native Communications Society (www.wawatay.on.ca).


-A-

ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line)
ADSL allows very high speed data movement over your regularcopper telephone line. It's called "asymmetric" because the speeds going INTO your house or business are much greater than the speeds sent from you back up the line. Operating in this "unbalanced" way makes sense because the large files requiring a lot of speed and bandwidth are coming TO your computer screen, while all that's being sent back from you is a relatively small amount of data -- thesignal you send back down the line when you click your mouse or type on your keyboard.


AMARC

(Association Mondiale des Radiodiffuseurs Communicautaires/World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters) AMARC is an international non-governmental organization serving the community radio movement. Its goal is to support and contribute to the development of community and participatory radioalong the principals of solidarity and international cooperation. All continents are represented on AMARC’s Board of Directors. (www.amarc.org)


Amplifier

A device used to increase the strength of electronic signals.


Analogue Transmission

A form of transmitting information characterized by continuously variable quantities as opposed to digital transmission, which is characterized by aseries of discrete numbers. All telephone companies support a minimum analogue data speed over phone lines. If your community telephone exchange has "analogue switching equipment" then you do not have access to the new communication technologies. See also "digital" and "modem."


Antenna

The device that concentrates a beam of electromagnetic waves to a focal point so as to send/receivesignals.

Aperture
The effective cross sectional area of the antenna. The larger the aperture, the stronger the signal the antenna receives or transmits.

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)
"Asynchronous" is a fancy word for "same." ATM is a switching technology that allows voice, data and video information to be moved over the same (asynchronous) communications network.


-B-
Backbone
Themain line that ties networks, phone systems or computers together. It's like the human skeleton, with many small connections (called nodes or terminals), branching off from the backbone.

Bandwidth
A way of measuring how much information flows through a line over a unit of time. Bandwidth can be measured in various ways such as the number of bits transmitted per second (See bit rate).
The...