Irreverent Acronyms

Admit it, who hasn’t thought up an irreverent, rude, or worse expansion of an industry acronym, or a humorous definition of a pompous term?

This is the place for all of those. If you have your own favorites, don’t neglect to tell us . And, this is all in fun so don’t get your knickers in a knot if you don’t like people being irreverent about your favorite technology. Just focus on developing new barbs aimed at the competition instead!

Our alternative, serious glossary of telecom terms and acronyms is a good source of ideas, apart from being a great glossary in its own right!

The only rules are:

Our suggestions should not be (too) rude
Not more than one of the words in your irreverent acronym should be in the serious expansion.
Preferably, the irreverent acronym should be a sardonic (or even sarcastic) comment on the serious meaning.

Recent additions will be shown in red for extra emphasis until we get tired of them.

[0-9] | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

3G [3rd Generation]: Gosh! Golly! Gee!; Gadgets Galore…Gradually (seanjr@another.com); Girls, Gambling and Games!; Governments Giving Gifts
AHAG: Aha! How Authentically Goofed-up (adapted from ravi_bowgal@yahoo.com)
AMPS: Answering May Produce Static.; At least My Phone Still works (mdlloyd@mindspring.com); …And Many Phones Scrapped (Masao Yamasawa, Japan); …And More Places Served (Masao Yamasawa, Japan); Americans Must Prove Something (cellshop@candw.ky, Cayman Islands)
ALI: Addresses: Lost and Inconsistent
ANI: Absolute Numbskull Indicator (adapted from sdevry@home.com)
AOL: Acronym Overload Land; Ain’t On-Line (Meinhardt7@msn.com)
ATIS: Alliance Taking It Slow (diedre@flash.net, USA)
BOHICA Bend Over Here It Comes Again (Dave Redmond – Dave@tripowergroup.com)
BSP (Coating on Manuals): Butt Sweat Protected (Stevve Adams, tazdpwwo@yahoo.com)
BTTC: Boring, Tiring, Tedious and Cumbersome.
CALEA: Cops And Lawmakers Eating Assets.; Criminals And Libertarians Each Abhor (it).
CARNIVORE [FBI email sniffing system]: Copious Agents Reading Nearly Infinite Volumes of Redundant Emails
CIA: Could Intoxicate America (great_guy55@hotmail.com).
CCIE (actually CISCO Certified Internetwork Engineer): Can’t Configure It Effectively (dssickler(at)aol.com).
CCITT: Croissants & Coffee Interrupted by Technical Trivia.; Crazy Committee Interested in Travel & Talk; Call Collect If Totally Trapped (adapted from arrowset<at>sympatico.ca)
CCNA (actually CISCO Certified Network Associate): Can’t Configure Networks Anymore (dssickler(at)aol.com).
CCNP (actually CISCO Certified Network Professional): Can’t Control Network Protocols (dssickler(at)aol.com).
CDMA: Could’ve Done More Arithmetic; Can’t Determine Market Availability (C. Baldwin, marvell@juno.com); Can Disconnect Mobiles Anywhere (doug.kramon@attws.com); Can’t Dial in Most Areas (mdlloyd@mindspring.com); Cash Doesn’t Matter Anymore (duenasd@kuentos.guam.net) … or …; Coverage Doesn’t Matter Anymore (mdlloyd@mindspring.com) … or …; Capacity Doesn’t Matter Anymore (Masao Yamasawa, Japan); Can Digital Match Analog (anonymous, from Australia, where digital (GSM and CDMA) are replacing analog by government fiat); Connecting Doesn’t Mean Anything (pringre@charlie.cns.iit.edu); Calls Drop Most Anywhere; Collisions Destroy Most Accesses (César del Pino, Spain); Christian Dior Mobile Accessories (seanjr@another.com); Customers Don’t Mean Anything (Keith Horak); Commercially Deployed and Miles Ahead (this one…); Cleverly Designed to Maximize the Airwaves (…and following…); Cool Data and Multimedia Applications (…are from…); Customers Deserve More Airtime (…Qualcomm advertisements…); Can Do Most Anything; Can’t Do Much Anyway
CDPD: Capacity Did Prove Deficient.
CIA: Can’t Ice Anyone.
CIBER: Cents Ignored By Eliminating Revenue.; Can It Bill European Roamers? (Jack Hwang, USA)
CIO: Career Is Over (keilsohn@home.com)
CLEC: Can’t Lose Enough Cash.
CPGA: Cost Percentage Grossly Arrogated (cbsewiz(at)hotmail.com)
CRTC: Canada’s Reward for Tired Campaigners; Canadian Roadblock to Telecommunications Competition (Craig Bruce, csbruce[at]pobox.com)
C-SPAN: Catering to Silly Politics Ad Nauseum (mydastrust-at-hotmail-dot-com).
CTIA: Cancer Tales Inhibit Achievements.; Can’t Take It Anymore; Constantly Taking Interfering Action (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
DEA: Denying Endowments Attentively (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
DoC: Dead on Contact (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
DHL: Drop it, Hide it, Lose it (fil(at)atlas.cz)
DOS: Dinosaur Operating System (jerryratliff1971(at)yahoo.com)
DSL: Download Service Lags (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
DVD: Diminishing VCR Dominance
EAP-TLS (security system) Exponentially Accessible Portals Tunneling Leaks Systematically (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
ECSA: Europe Crying and Screaming for Attention (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
EDGE: Enhanced Design to Go Erroneous (tshveta(at)netscape.net).
EIA: Explosive Incontinence Attack (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
ESN: Engineer Safer Numbering.
EPE: Everyone’s Privacy Excluded (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
ETSI: Eradicate TIA Standards Immediately (‘Q’).; European Travel and Sightseeing Initiative.; Existing Telecom Standards Insufficient (Harshawardhan Lele, harshawardhan.r.lele@tek.com, India)
FBI: Fumbling Bureaucratic Inefficiency (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
FCC: Funnel Cash to Congress; First Class Catastrophe; Forcing a CALEA Compromise; Frequently Causing Chaos (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999); Friendly Candy Company (Telcordia August 1999 San Francisco Wireless Basics Class); Flippin’ Calling-party-pays Controversy (hilld@aztechcon.com)
FTTC: Federal Tyrants Taking Cash (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
Gates, Bill: Greedy And Terrible Eater of Software Competitors, “Bullying Is Lotsa Laughs”.
GPRS: Group of People Reading Specs (and doing nothing) (tshveta@netscape.net, USA); Gullible Punters Requiring Speed (seanjr@another.com)
GPS: Great Plan for Spying; Going Places Slowly
GSM: God Send Mobiles [c. 1992]; Gotta Start Making Money [c. 1993]; Giant Static Maker [c. 1994]; Got Services and MOU; Gone to Some other Method (C. Baldwin, marvell@juno.com); Great Software Monster (vesa.maki@benefon.fi); Giant Software Mistake (Michael.Heilman@Ericsson.com); Goodluck Sending Messages (mdlloyd@mindspring.com); God Save Motorola (freaky1_1@excite.com); Giant Signaling Machine (david@sanders-consulting.com); God Silence these Morons (Mike Belin, California)
HDSL: Horrible Download Service Lag (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
HLR: Here Lie Roamers; How Lost ’R u? (Benjamin.Smith@uscellular.com)
IBM: It’s Being Mended (jimd@spider.com); I Believe in Mediocrity (jimd@spider.com); I’ve Been Moved (Joe Walsh, w10981@email.mot.com); Immature, But Marketable (fred@dinkler.com); It’s Better done Manually; I Blame Microsoft (Krishna Prasad, krisprasad@hotmail.com, India); I’ve Been Married (Charles Stumpwhistle, ex-IBMer, admin@opsimath.com); Idiots Become Managers (admin@opsimath.com); Itsy Bitsy Machines (admin@opsimath.com); Insh’allah Bukrah Ma’alesh (Arabic, means approximately “God willing, in the morning, there might be something to sell” – admin@opsimath.com); Institute for Bungling Morons.; Insane Beyond Management (Stephen Becker).
ICANN: Infernal Corporation Appropriating National Nomenclature (cbsecwiz(at)hotmail.com)
iDEN: It Don’t Enhance Nothin’; It Drops Every-call Now!; I Do Everything for Nextel
IHA: I hate acronyms (Robert Pierce, USA)
IIS: Impossible to Initiate Safely (Manuel Baselga, Spain)
ILEC: Idiots Liking Excessive Charges (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999)
IMT-2000: It’s Marketing Trying To (make us say) ooo!
INTEL: I Never Took Engineering Lessons (jfbeaumont@yahoo.com)
Internet: In no time everyone’s raiding nearly everyone’s trash (Emile van der Merwe, South Africa)
IMTS: Idiots Must Talk Somehow (Telcordia August 1999 San Francisco Wireless Basics Class)
ISDN: Innovation Subscribers Don’t Need; Internet Saved d’ere Neck; It Still Does Nothing (lduenweg@sisktel.com); Ich Sehe Das Nicht ([German version] harald.hoffmann@osiconsult.co.at); I Smell DeutcheMarks Now! (Andrew-till@psion.com); I See Dollars Now (Phil Audino, ETRI); It Sometimes Does Network (kplus@bellatlantic.net); I Still Don’t Know (asinghal@hotmail.com); I Suspect Dubious Nomenclature (arrowset@sympatico.ca); Invention Sucks Dollars Nicely (fred@dinkler.com); It Still Doesn’t Network (wmarti@tamu.edu); Idiotic Semi-Detectable Network (paul_griffin@lpsg.com, USA)
ISO: Illegible Software Ordinances (Manuel Baselga, Spain); Invariably Soon Outdated (Manuel Baselga, Spain); Infinite Sheet Organizers (adapted from Manual Baselga, Spain)
IT: Idiotic Torturers; Insolent Terrorists
ITU: Impossible To Understand (lborjesson@ts.es); It’s Totally Useless (mlombino@ibm.net); It Troubles You (chandrani.chaudhuri@wipro.com)
LANP: Let’s Ask Next Person (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999)
LATA: LEC Ain’t Toting Across (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999); Leave A Telco Alone (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999); Long Awaited Technical Assistance (arrowset@sympatico.ca); Local Access Telephones Arbitrarily (Manuel Baselga, Spain)
LEC: Losing Existing Customers (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999)
LERG: Let Everyone Rage & Groan (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999); Let Everyone Really Guess (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999)
LIDB: Looking Into Dead Beats (Terrie Tyler, Hewlett Packard)
LMDS: Lucrative Method for Delivering Service (Tim Kridel, Wireless Review Magazine)
LNP: Lost Network Performance.; Lotsa Nervous People; Lots of Network Problems (Michele Young, YoungIdeas)
LRIC: Low Rate Incumbent Cash-flow (Telcordia Wireless Interconnect Class of May, 1999)
Macintosh: Most Applications Crash. If Not, The Operating System Hangs (dlmclaug@eos.ncsu.edu); Many Anguished Customers, Mostly Academic and Clueless (lellis@southwind.net)