Working in telecommunications is a bit of a headache with acronyms and jargon being tossed around within nearly every conversation. It’s likely that a person new to the industry will not be able to understand such interactions. I’ve gone through a significant learning curve in my tenure at RCR and I thought I’d share some definitions of the jargon for those that may not understand all of them.
The buzzwords to cover today include cramming, churn, and throttling, plus an overview of the acronyms NFC and RFID.
Cramming is when third-party charges are added onto a user’s bill, leading to consumer anger from being charged for services they didn’t sign up for or, in some cases, even know was taking place. The FCC voted last week to monitor and hold accountable those that are involved in cramming but it’s yet to be seen if the move will be effective.
The term “churn” is a financial metric used by investors to grade company performance and often used to describe the rates at which consumers are willing to bolt from a subscription service such as a wireless carrier. Netflix caused a lot of churn last week when it unveiled its very unpopular new price hikes and subscription plans.
When a customer consumes a maximum set amount of data, “throttling” can occur. Once the max limit is reached, the carrier slows down the customer’s connection speed to control users of excessive bandwidth. Those carriers who continue to claim offers of unlimited data plans are sometimes guilty of this practice, while technically riding the line of dishonesty by claiming the deals on the data are “unlimited.”
While there are several acronyms to cover, one of the hottest is NFC, aka “near-field communications.” It is the catalyst that drives mobile transactions nowadays by allowing data from one NFC chip to transfer data to another. The Nexus S smartphone, which carries NFC, is being touted as the leading phone to break into the mobile payment field and tests by PayPal indicate that a simple tap between Nexus S devices can transfer monies.
Since this is a new market to tap into, there is tons of investment being placed into replacing a person’s wallet with a device as competing services, credit card companies, retailers and tech firms align themselves for the long battle.
RFID stands for “radio frequency identification” and refers to communication through the use of radio waves to transfer data between a reader and an electronic tag attached to an object for the purpose of identification and tracking.
A good example is how toll roads across the U.S. scan cars that carry tags on them to pay for tolls instead of making a driver stop and pay at a toll station. RFID is a major improvement to the likes of bar code tracking which has been used since the 1970s. With bar codes, it’s only possible to identify a certain brand or type of package in a grocery store, for instance. Furthermore, passive RFID tags (those without a battery) can be read if passed within close enough proximity to an RFID reader.
What other words should be covered and added to this list? Please feel free to contribute in the comments section.
