Telecommunications Business, Billing & Project Management Flashcards
6 cards from real CTA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Telecommunications Business, Billing & Project Management flashcards as text
What is 'Number Portability' and why was it mandated in the US?
Answer: The ability for customers to keep their telephone number when switching service providers, mandated to increase competition by reducing the switching barrier
Local Number Portability (LNP) was mandated by the FCC under the Telecom Act of 1996 to allow competition by preventing carriers from locking customers to a number they'd lose upon switching.
What does 'time to repair' (TTR) or 'mean time to repair' (MTTR) measure in telecom SLA management?
Answer: The average time from when a service outage is reported until the service is fully restored, a key SLA performance metric
MTTR is a critical SLA metric measuring service restoration speed; lower MTTR indicates faster troubleshooting and repair, directly affecting customer satisfaction and potential SLA credits.
What is 'access charge' in US telecommunications billing?
Answer: A fee paid by long-distance carriers and CLECs to ILECs for originating or terminating calls on the local network
Access charges compensate ILECs (local phone companies) for the cost of maintaining local loops that other carriers use to originate or terminate calls.
In enterprise telecom procurement, what is the difference between an ILEC and a CLEC?
Answer: ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) is the legacy monopoly local phone company; CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) is a competitor that entered after deregulation under the Telecom Act of 1996
ILECs like AT&T and Verizon are the original Bell System successors; CLECs like Windstream or Cbeyond entered the market after the 1996 Telecom Act opened local markets to competition.
What is 'bandwidth on demand' (BoD) in carrier services?
Answer: A service capability allowing customers to dynamically increase or decrease their committed bandwidth in near-real time without ordering a new circuit
Bandwidth on demand lets enterprises scale circuit capacity up or down based on real-time needs (e.g., end-of-quarter data replication), paying only for what they use when they need it.
What is a tariff in US telecommunications regulation, and how does it differ from a negotiated contract?
Answer: A tariff is a carrier's published schedule of rates and terms filed with a regulatory body, available to all customers equally; a contract is a privately negotiated agreement between a carrier and a specific customer
Carriers file tariffs with state PUCs or the FCC that publicly state rates and terms for regulated services; contracts allow larger customers to negotiate custom pricing outside tariff rates.