T-Mobile phone glossary

This glossary is to help T-Mobile customers to understand common terminology that is used in the mobile phone industry.

411 Directory Assistance
This is a T-Mobile service that will allow you to speak to a live operator at any time for assistance with any information you require. You can also get the weather forecast, sports scores and your daily horoscope. Just dial 411 on your T-Mobile phone for all the information you require, and most of the time the operator will also connect you with the number you want.

802.11b
This service, which is commonly known as Wi-Fi, is a direct interface used by a wireless client to contact a base station or another wireless client. It is used with wireless LANs and allows 11Mbps of broadcast, which affords a wireless function similar to Ethernet. 802.11 is the defining standard for wireless LANs, and comprises 3 technologies that are incompatible and therefore unable to interface with each other, these being: Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), Infrared and Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS).

Access Point
An access point is a communications nucleus that supplies a wireless link to a wireless-enabled computer in a wireless local area network or WLAN. This allows users to connect to each other and also forms the interface between wireless and a standard fixed wire phone system. Each access point serves many users within a certain area and as people move out of range they are automatically switched to another one.

BAN - Billing Account Number
The BAN is the 10-digit T-Mobile number for your personal plan, or, in the case of multiline or FamilyTime® plans, of the principal account holder.

Bandwidth
This is the information carrying capability of a communications line or computer channel, and is described as cycles per second, or Hertz. Bandwidth is the variation between the highest and lowest frequencies, and is also expressed in bytes per second or bits per second, Bps and bps respectively.

Call Centre
The Call Centres provided by T-Mobile are manned by customer service representatives who supply T-Mobile clients with information on subjects that range from activation and rate plans to billing queries and support on wireless equipment such as accessories, ring-tones and handsets.

EasyPay
This is the quickest, easiest way to pay your bill automatically. If you sign up with our free EasyPay service, your monthly payments are deducted from your bank or credit card account, and a monthly statement will be sent to you by mail. Payments are transferred three days prior to your bill's due date, which allows plenty of time to call us with any questions or comments in this regard.

Handheld
Also called a PDA or personal digital assistant, this convenient device is mostly used to store personal data such as notes, addresses and appointments. A T-Mobile handheld is also a phone and HTML or WAP Internet browser.

Handset
This term stems from hard-wired telephonic technology and means the part that is held in your hand, which contains the receiver and transmitter. In wireless handheld devices, the handset is the mobile phone.