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The world of telecom can seem like an exclusive club at times, mainly because its members throw around a lot of secret code words. If you don't use the right jargon, you are deemed an outsider and may not be treated with the level of respect you deserve.
The good news is that familiarity with just a handful of terms will get you into a comfortable middle-class position in the pecking order, where you can get both respect and help.
Getting to know your LEC
The term LEC (pronounced lek) stands for local exchange carrier. LECs are local phone carriers, such as Verizon, Bell South, Qwest, or Southern Bell Company (SBC). If you are speaking to your long-distance carrier, you can refer to the company that provides dial tone and phone numbers for you as a LEC.
 | When you call your long-distance carrier to chat about a new phone line that needs long-distance service, simply say, "I just got a new phone number from my LEC that you need to set up on your network." |
Understanding ANIs
You can either pronounce ANI as ay-en-eye or ann-ee, but in the end, your ANI is a phone number. During trouble reporting, if a technician asks for the origination and termination ANI, you just need to provide the phone number that originated the call and the phone number that was dialed (or where the call was intended to terminate).
| This term can be used often. When you call your LEC, you could ask, "Are all of my ANIs set up with AT&T for long distance?" If you have many phone lines and a phone system that pulls them all together, you could use the term when opening a trouble ticket with your long-distance carrier. Say, "We have about 20 ANIs going through our phone system, so I don't know which line actually originated the call. But it was made to the term ANI at exactly 3:27 p.m. today." (Term ANI stands for terminating ANI or terminating phone number.) |
Getting firm with an FOC
The term FOC stands for Firm Order Commitment. You can pronounce it by its individual letters (eff-oh-see) or call it a fawk. The FOC is the document that tells you the date on which your order will be completed. This goes for all orders in telecom, from the installation of huge dedicated circuits to the conversion of a single phone line to a new long-distance carrier.
| Say, "Our order has been pending for a few days, do we have a FOC yet?" The same question is sometimes asked, "Did we get FOCed on the new T-1s yet?" (This sentence is generally spoken using the second pronunciation.) |
NASCing your numbers
A NASC (pronounced nask) is more than just an administrative group in telecom, it's also a threat. NASCing is the act of using the Number Administration and Service Center to forcibly extract a toll-free number from a carrier. If you're in the process of moving all your toll-free numbers to a new carrier, and are met with resistance from your old carrier, you can just NASC your numbers. The luxury of NASCing costs about $40 per toll-free number.
| After having your toll-free number migration rejected numerous times for silly reasons, call your new carrier and say, "I am tired of this game of patty-cake! Just NASC the numbers and be done with it." As long as your old carrier doesn't want to NASC the numbers back and begin a game of tug of war, NASCing is your quickest solution to toll-free migration problems. |
Getting an RFO
As in most industries, a problem found generally turns into a cover-up begun. An RFO, Reason for Outage, is a document that provides the official Word on the cause of a network issue that prevents your service from working. If your carrier's switch sustains a direct lightening strike, preventing you from using your phone service for three days, it is acceptable to ask for an RFO.
 | An RFO is a document that your carrier (rightfully) thinks may be used against it in a court of law. Because of this, you have a very good chance of receiving a document that is so watered down and vague that it has no real substance to it. Any RFO you receive will only tell you what you already know. |
| Sound like a pro when you say to a representative at a carrier, "My boss is steamed that our T-1 was down for five days; can you get me some sort of an RFO so that he knows I was pushing to get the issue addressed and repaired?" |
Getting your hands on a CSU
The Channel Service Unit (CSU, pronounced see-ess-you) is a little device about the size of a cigar box that's used on dedicated circuits. It is the first piece of hardware you need to make your dedicated circuit work, and its daily job is boosting the signal coming in from your carrier. The CSU is also the first piece of hardware used to validate the continuity on a dedicated circuit.
| If you want to impress a technician without sounding obvious, say, "Wow, you can test to my CSU without any problem? That's great! I'll call my hardware vendor right now to fix my phone system and then cut out for lunch." |
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