ails
on the domestic and international components. The following terms and
abbreviations are used throughout the entry:

Africa ONE - a fiber-optic submarine cable link encircling the
continent of Africa.

Arabsat - Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia).

Autodin - Automatic Digital Network (US Department of Defense).

CB - citizen's band mobile radio communications.

cellular telephone system - the telephones in this system are
radio transceivers, with each instrument having its own private radio
frequency and sufficient radiated power to reach the booster station in
its area (cell), from which the telephone signal is fed to a regular
telephone exchange.

Central American Microwave System - a trunk microwave radio relay
system that links the countries of Central America and Mexico with each
other.

coaxial cable - a multichannel communication cable consisting of a
central conducting wire, surrounded by and insulated from a cylindrical
conducting shell; a large number of telephone channels can be made
available within the insulated space by the use of a large number of
carrier frequencies.

Comsat - Communications Satellite Corporation (US).

DSN - Defense Switched Network (formerly Automatic Voice Network
or Autovon); basic general-purpose, switched voice network of the
Defense Communications System (US Department of Defense).

Eutelsat - European Telecommunications Satellite Organization
(Paris).

fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a
thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the
signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded pulse of light.

GSM - a global system for mobile (cellular) communications devised
by the Groupe Special Mobile of the pan-European standardization
organization, Conference Europeanne des Posts et Telecommunications
(CEPT) in 1982.

HF - high frequency; any radio frequency in the 3,000- to 30,000-
kHz range.

Inmarsat - International Mobile Satellite Organization (London);
provider of global mobile satellite communications for commercial,
distress, and safety applications at sea, in the air, and on land.

Intelsat - International Telecommunications Satellite Organization
(Washington, DC).

Intersputnik - International Organization of Space Communications
(Moscow); first established in the former Soviet Union and