| Baby Bells | See RBOC |
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| Backbone | |
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| Ballot | A release form that authorizes a customer's long-distance phone service to be switched to (another) long-distance carrier, or reseller. Also know as a Letter Of Agency or LOA. |
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| BAN - Billing Account Number | Used by telephone companies to designate a billing account, i.e., a customer or customer location that receives a bill. A customer may have any number of BANs. |
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| Banded Rates | Tariffed rates which may be changed by the carrier within a specified range. Frequently, state commissions require notice to the commission prior to each change. Banded rates are being used less frequently today. |
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| Bell Customer Code | A three-digit numeric code, appended to the end of the Main Billing Telephone Number, that is used by Local Exchange Carriers to provide unique identification of customers. |
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| Bell Operating Company - BOC | The local (or regional) telephone company that owns and operates lines to customer locations and Class 5 Central Office Switches. BOCs have connections to other COs, Tandem (Class 4 Toll) offices and may connect directly to IECs like WorldCom, AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc. BOC may refer to the nineteen Bell Operating Companies that are owned by the seven RHCs (Regional Holding Companies) (not including Cincinnati Bell or Southern New England Telephone). The BOC role was originally defined by the 1982 Modified Final Judgement that specified the terms of the AT&T Divestiture). For Example, the three BOCs: Mountain Bell, Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell are owned by the U.S. West RHC. Each BOC may service more than one LATA, but BOCs are generally constrained from providing long distance service between LATAs. |
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| Bill-To-Room | A billing option associated with Operator Assisted calls that allows the calling party to bill a call to their hotel room. With this option, the carrier is required to notify the hotel, upon completion of the call, of the time and charges. |
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| Billing Account Number - BAN | Used by telephone companies to designate a customer or customer location that will be billed. A single customer may have multiple billing accounts. |
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| Block Calls | Prevent calls from completing to the requested destination. May be due to network problems (outage, overload, etc.), or by customer request (e.g. block calls from-or-to certain NPAs, NXXs, States, LATAs, etc.). |
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| BOC - See Bell Operating Company | |
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| Bong | An interactive signal that prompts the originating end user to enter additional information. For example: 1010555 Bong (Enter Destination) Bong (Enter Billing information) |
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| BTN - Billing Telephone Number | The phone number associated, for billing purposes, with the Working Phone Number. |
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| Bypass | Access an IEC other than the customer's Equal Access carrier by dialing 10+CIC Code. (e.g. Bypass to WorldCom by dialing "1010555"). See Walkthrough, CIC Code |
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