Commercial term meaning Business-to-Business commerce, as distinct from Business-to-Consumer or Retail Business.

The electronic `spine` of a telecommunications network which joins slower and dispersed network elements. A common telecommunications backbone in Australia carries network traffic between Melbourne and Sydney and is a private, managed network. Telstra, Optus and AAPT all have such networks.

The account number attached to a service(s). Most often a customer will only have a single BAN from a service provider. However, customers may elect to have several BANs; to designate between sites, for example.

Refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. For digital devices, the bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or bytes per second.

These are the letters, which appear on your bill beside the calls you have made, eg. O for off peak and P for peak.

Blocks of time, usually 1 second or 30 second blocks, which are used by a service provider to calculate the cost of a call. Example: If a mobile phone plan states that calls are billed per 30 seconds, then calls lasting 3 sec, 14 sec and 30 sec will all be billed the same; as one 30 second billing increment. However, a 31 sec call will be billed as two billing increments. Example: If a mobile phone deal states that calls are to be billed in 1 second increments, then all calls are billed per second. Typically, billing in 1 sec increments will be approximately 3.5% cheaper than billing in 30 second increments.

The smallest unit of information on a computer, a bit, is expressed by a 1 or a 0. A kilobit equals 1,000 bits. A megabit, 1 million bits.

The BlackBerry is a handheld wireless device providing e-mail, telephone, text messaging and web browsing and other wireless data access. In Australia, BlackBerry operates mostly on the GPRS network. However, BlackBerry will begin operating at higher speeds as networks are upgraded.

Bluetooth® complements wireless LAN perfectly by providing a quick and easy way of connecting one Bluetooth®-enabled device to another without going through your network. For example, you could print a document at a satellite office from your laptop to any Bluetooth®-enabled printer within range (Bluetooth®, products work over shorter distances than wireless networks - approximately 10 metres). In addition, by creating a temporary network, (also known as a personal area network - PAN) you can exchange files at informal meetings - say, around a client`s conference table. Put simply, Bluetooth®, provides the opportunity for flexible, spontaneous working, especially if you don`t have the time to connect to a fixed or wireless network.

Bits per Second. A measurement of data transfer speed. Rates are the number of bits that are transmitted per second. See also Kbps

see VoIP

see VoIP

A software application which facilitates interaction with the World Wide Web. A browser uses HTTP to interact with Web servers online. Also called a Web Browser.

Combining any or all telecommunication services from a single provider. Bundled offers usually confer a discount on one or more services.

A byte consists of 8 bits, the smallest unit of information on a computer, expressed as either a 1 or a 0. The expression 01001101 is equal to one byte of information. A kilobyte is 1,000 bytes of information. A megabyte is 1 million bytes.