Carrier

How it is used

Common in American and industry English: a wireless carrier, a long-haul carrier, carrier-grade equipment. Large companies often buy links from two different carriers for diversity. In radio engineering, 'carrier' can also mean a carrier wave or a block of spectrum, such as a 20 MHz carrier.

Example sentences

1. We use two different carriers so that one fibre cut can't take both links down.

2. The carrier confirmed a fault on their side and sent a field team.

Common collocations

• mobile carrier
• carrier-grade
• carrier network
• long-haul carrier
• carrier diversity

Related terms

• ISPShort for internet service provider: a company that sells internet access to homes and businesses, usually over fibre, DSL, cable or mobile networks.
• backboneThe high-capacity core part of a network that connects smaller networks, sites or cities and carries most of the traffic between them.
• spectrumThe range of radio frequencies that can be used for wireless communication; mobile operators need licences from the national regulator to use particular parts of it.
• SLAShort for service level agreement: the part of a contract in which a provider promises measurable service levels, such as uptime, repair time and latency, often with penalties if it fails.
• MPLSShort for Multiprotocol Label Switching: a technique used in operator networks that forwards traffic using short labels instead of full IP lookups; it is widely sold to companies as a private WAN service.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• carrier · Genetics & Biotechnology
• carrier · E-commerce
• carrier · Logistics & Supply Chain

More terms: Telecom Operators and Services

• last mile
• broadband
• provision
• NOC