A - B

ACD
An Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is a telephone facility that manages incoming calls and handles them based on the number called and an associated database of handling instructions. Many companies offering sales and service support use ACDs to validate callers, make outgoing responses or calls, forward calls to the right party, allow callers to record messages, gather usage statistics, balance the use of phone lines, and provide other services.

aDSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line is a technology for transmitting digital information at a high bandwidth on existing phone lines to homes and businesses. Unlike regular dialup phone service, ADSL provides continuously available, "always on" connection. ADSL is asymmetric in that it uses most of the channel to transmit downstream to the user and only a small part to receive information from the user. ADSL was specifically designed to exploit the one-way nature of most multimedia communication in which large amounts of information flow toward the user and only a small amount of interactive control information is returned.

ANALOGUE
The varying frequency of amplitude (in wave forms). Analogue telephone lines are associated with older technology; today customers will prefer digital lines instead (see modem ).

ASP
An application service provider (ASP) is a company that offers individuals or enterprises access over the Internet to applications and related services that would otherwise have to be located in their own personal or enterprise computers. Sometimes referred to as "apps-on-tap," ASP services are expected to become an important alternative, not only for smaller companies with low budgets for information technology, but also for larger companies as a form of outsourcing and for many services for individuals as well.

B-CHANNEL
In the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN ), the B-channel is the channel that carries the main data. (The "B" stands for "bearer" channel.)

BANDWIDTH
Bandwidth is used to mean (1) how fast data flows on a given transmission path, and (2), somewhat more technically, the width of the range of frequencies that an electronic signal occupies on a given transmission medium. Any digital or analogue signal has a bandwidth. Generally speaking, bandwidth is directly proportional to the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. In a qualitative sense, bandwidth is proportional to the complexity of the data for a given level of system performance. For example, it takes more bandwidth to download a photograph in one second than it takes to download a page of text in one second. Large sound files, computer programs, and animated videos require still more bandwidth for acceptable system performance. Virtual reality (VR) and full-length three-dimensional audio/visual presentations require the most bandwidth of all.
In digital systems, bandwidth is expressed as data speed in bits per second (bps). Thus, a modem that works at 57,600 bps has twice the bandwidth of a modem that works at 28,800 bps.

BPS
In data communications, bits per second (abbreviated bps) is a common measure of data speed for computer modems and transmission carriers. As the term implies, the speed in bps is equal to the number of bits transmitted or received each second.

BRA
Basic Rate Access = 2 digital lines (see  DASS) It is possible with the BRA service to use both lines at the same time. Each line can carry up to 64kbits of information hence the overall bandwidth used in this service can be increased to 128K.

BYTE (see BPS and DIGITAL)
A byte is a string of bits usually 8 bits long.