TDS Acronyms
This three letter acronym that refers to the "outside" portion of a build that is not normally contained within our telephone offices.
What is OSP (Outside Plant)?
This sometimes hand drawn document is usually scaled to the size the of a neighborhood of subdivision and shows parcel size, boundaries, Easements, Right of Ways, and land features. These can typically be found in the registry office for a municipality or county.
What is a Plat Map?
Beaver Island (the largest island in Lake Michigan) has 557 residents as of 2010 and is part of the Island Telephone Company.
What is Michigan?
In 1981 TDS sold 1 million shares of the company through the American Stock Exchange under this ticker symbol (code that represents company in stock market).
What is TDS?
This is an abbreviation for a term the company uses to maximizing construction efficiency in a specific area (less splicing, smaller cable counts etc.). Often large builds are split into several of these that are supposed to serve less than a 100 service addresses.
What is DFN (distributed fiber network)?
This is often abbreviated as EOP on plans and most DOTs love to have accurate depictions on our plans.
What is an End of Pavement?
In our Cape Vincent Exchange, Carleton Island was an important fort, naval station and safe haven for loyalists during the Revolutionary War. After the war it was ceded to America and now sits at a unique point at the end of Lake Ontario and the beginning of the Saint Lawrence Seaway between the US and Canada.
What is New York?
In 1983 this company is founded as a subsidiary of TDS, focusing on cellular service, it was sold/disbanded in 2025.
What is US Cellular?
This is the acronym for a project type that is used to evaluate special customer requests and needs, determine if those needs can be met, discover pricing and if approved, build it. Usually, it is for commercial customers that need high speed special circuits.
What is a CAA? Customer Application Analysis
An Easement or Lease almost always must be signed in the presence of this.
What is a Notary?
Isle Au Haut was named by a French explorer and now contains a portion of Acadia National Park. It was originally incorporated by Massachusetts, and by 1800 had roughly 50 Scottish and English settlers. Telephone Service was not established until 1988, and the island is within our aptly named Islands Telephone Company.
What is Maine?
In 1969, TDS was founded, which was also the year of this event, which was the largest television event in history at the time.
What is the NASA moon landing?
Two letter acronym for the facility which houses the switching equipment to connect the last mile of the phone network, or the wiring in the air/ground to the premise. This building usually holds the ILEC switch and equipment to connect to other CLEC switches.
What is CO? Central Office
Some permit authorities require this to be stamped onto complex or important plans/prints/staking sheets/profiles in order to approve them. This stamp is usually specific to a person and state.
What is a PE Stamp (professional engineer)?
Bull or Bulls Island has no telecom facilities, but is still located within our Mclellanville Telephone Company. At 20 km² it provides an important sanctuary for the red wolf and is one of the most northern islands in this state's portion of the Sea Islands chain that exist in the southeastern US.
What is South Carolina?
Starting in 2025 TDS started its own wireless cellular mobile offering. This term, that is abbreviated as MVNO, describes the product where an entity offers cellular services, but does not own the underlying wireless network infrastructure.
What is Mobile Virtual Network Operator?
This is the OSPC unit for new strand (the structural [usually galvanized steel] wire that holds the actual telecom wire).
What is 6M?
This is an insurance or bank product that is used most often at TDS to provide Permitting Authorities a monetary guarantee of successful completion of work by a contractor. It is different from a certificate of insurance which we also often use.
What is a Performance Bond
In our Camden Telephone and Telegraph Company, Cumberland Island is the largest (and one of the most southern) of the Sea Island chain at 56.9 mi². While it used to grow prized sea island cotton, it is now a national seashore with a small amount of private land and about fifty residents.
What is Georgia?
In 2000, TDS introduces this service, often abbreviated to DSL, as a new way to transmit digital data over telephone lines.
What is digital subscriber line?