OCn
US:
OC stands for 'optical carrier' which allows digital signals to be transported
at multiples (n) of a base transmission rate of 51.84 Mbps, e.g. an OC3 circuit
has a transmission rate of 155.52 Mbps circuit.
One-Number
Service
US: A service that enables
subscribers to use a single telephone number for both wireless and wireline telephones.
One-way Bypass
US:
Bypassing traditional international accounting and settlement arrangements in
one direction only. Thus, as the term is used in the U.S., One-way bypass refers
to a situation in which a foreign carrier from
a country that does not permit private line resale
opportunities equivalent to those available under U.S. law is permitted to terminate
its traffic inbound to the U.S. market over resold international private lines,
which are not subject to settlement rates. The
foreign carrier would receive an above-cost settlement rate to terminate U.S.
outbound traffic in its market, while unilaterally cutting its own costs by bypassing
the accounting rate system to terminate its switched
traffic inbound to the U.S. market over resold private lines.
Open Network Architecture
(ONA)
US: An ambitious
plan devised by the FCC to ensure that competitive enhanced
service providers (i.e., information service
providers) would have nondiscriminatory access to bell
operating company (BOC) 'bottleneck' networks,
so that both groups could compete on a 'level playing field.'
Under ONA, the BOCs would 'unbundle' their local
exchange networks into individually tariffed 'piece parts' called 'Basic Service
Elements' (BSEs) which would be made available to competing enhanced service providers.
In exchange for deploying ONA, BOCs would be permitted to provide competitive
enhanced services on a structurally integrated basis along with their regulated
basic services, instead of under the former structural
separation requirements. Once a BOC's ONA plan has been approved by the FCC, it
may provide any enhanced service on an integrated basis without prior FCC approval.
As an interim measure, the FCC developed 'Comparably
Efficient Interconnection' (CEI) under which
a BOC could provide individual enhanced services on an integrated basis, subject
to prior FCC approval for each service.
FCC
efforts to develop and implement ONA began in the mid 1980s in the context of
its Computer Inquiry III and remain incomplete
because of court challenges that have yet to be fully addressed. In January 1998,
the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
containing proposals intended finally to resolve the ONA issue and to bring ONA
into 'harmony' with the newer network unbundling requirements of the Telecommunications
Act of 1996. [See also Basic Service Element
(BSE); California I ; California
II ; California III ; Comparably
Efficient Interconnection (CEI); Computer Inquiry
III ; enhanced service; information
service; CI's Client Briefing
Note on Open Network Architecture.]
Open
Video System (OVS)
Operations Support Systems (OSS)
US:
Generally, those systems and databases used by telephone companies for pre-ordering,
ordering, provisioning, maintenance and repair, and billing. In its August
1996 Interconnection Order implementing the local competition provisions
of the '96 Act, the FCC concluded that OSS and the information they contain fall
within the Act's definition of "network element"
and therefore must be unbundled by incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs)
and offered upon request to competing telecommunications
carrier on the same basis such services are available to the ILEC itself.
[Pre-ordering and ordering include, e.g., the exchange of information between
LECs about current or proposed customer products
and services, unbundled network elements, customer data on current services, and
credit and payment history; provisioning
involves the exchange of information between LECs where one executes a request
for a set of products and services or unbundled network elements from the other
with attendant acknowledgments and status reports; maintenance and repair involves
the exchange of information between LECs where one initiates a request for repair
of existing products and services or unbundled network elements from the other
with attendant acknowledgments and status reports; and billing involves the provision
of usage data by one LEC to another to facilitate customer billing and to process
claims and adjustments with attendant acknowledgments
and status reports.] Operators
Harmonization Group (OHG)
An
ad hoc group of wireless operators and manufacturers that submitted to the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) in June 1999 a compromise proposal designed to unify
wideband CDMA and cdma2000 proposals for a third generation (3G) wireless standard.
Subsequently, the ITU task group charged with establishing a standard for 3G wireless
systems, formally endorsed the OHG compromise.
Operator
Services
US:
Any automatic or live assistance to a consumer to arrange for billing or completion,
or both, of a telephone call through a method other than: (1) automatic completion
with billing to the telephone from which the call originated; or (2) completion
through an access code by the consumer, with billing of an account previously
established with the telecommunications service provider by the consumer. [from
Telephone Operator Consumer Services Improvement Act (TOCSIA) of 1990; Section
226(a)(7) of the Communications Act of 1934]
Operator Services Provider (OSP)
US:
Any telecommunications carrier that routinely
accepts inter-state collect calls(in which the called party agrees to pay the
charges), credit card calls, andthird-party billing calls made from public phones
and other aggregatorlocations, such as payphones,
hotels, hospitals, and educational institutions.[see also aggregator]