When I attend CES in Las Vegas, where the latest technology is on display, I talk a different language, I call it E2E (Engineer-to-Engineer). At every industry event there are technical words and abbreviations that are required to speak and write about the business.
E2E is full of acronyms, if you don’t know the acronyms mean, you may become totally lost in all forms of communication.
Acronyms for each industry are different. For example, when I was writing for Wireless Week and then as the publisher for Wireless and Mobile News, in emergencies wireless carriers have a whole zoo of animals to deliver services. COWs don’t moo they are cells on wheels. COLTS are not horses but cells on light trucks. HORSEs are HVACs on roadside equipment , GOATs are generators on a trailer, RATs are repeaters on a trailer and CROWs are cell repeaters on wheels. Therefore, someone overhearing a conversation about emergency wireless services may think we were talking about farm when in fact we are talking about wireless equipment.
One change of a letter can change the entire meaning. With WAP and WAN changing a “P” to an “N” goes from a wireless application protocol to a wide area network. Change the “W” to an “R” for RAN there’s no running around— it’s Radio Access Network.
Then there are words that in real life have different meanings than in the business even though they sound the same.
Spectrum– is not colors of the rainbow. In telecommunications it is the radio frequencies allocated to the mobile industry and other sectors for communication over the airwaves.
Backhaul – once I was interviewing someone new to the wireless business and he thought I said back hall, like the back of the theatre, when I was referring to the back bone of the network. Now if I was talking to a doctor a back bone would have a different meaning.
OTT – If you do crafts, you many have an OttLite to see what you are doing better. But if you are in the entertainment business you are streaming over the top media.
Man-in-Middle in basketball is way to get a great shot, but in the case of cybersecurity, it’s a diabolical way to break into a network.
Every business has its own vocabulary and acronyms. If a writer doesn’t understand what E2E term to use, she/he may use an anachronism by mistake.