Editing P2p mobile carriers (section)

= 1. Glossary of key terms =

'''IMSI''' = International mobile subscriber identity. It’s like a unique user ID. In the mobile system you can do many different types of queries by knowing a users IMSI (e.g. retrieving location information.)

'''IMEI''' = International mobile equipment identity. It’s like a MAC address for the phone and identifies the make and model. '''There are few checks on this so its easy to make one up. I’ve listed this here because carriers use IMEIs to ban devices and track customers.'''

'''MsC''' = Mobile switching centre. Kind of like a router in the phone system. It helps to relay calls and SMS to the right nodes in the network, and ensures the correct customer gets billed for a service.

'''T-IMSI''' = Temporary international mobile subscriber identity. Acts just like a regular IMSI, but is randomly generated per session. Because the IMSI is used to identify users and is required in some signalling messages, the T-IMSI can be used in place of it as an alias of sorts.

'''BS''' = Base station. The base station is the tower that transmits messages to your mobile device on different frequencies. There’s a range of frequencies that are reserved for working out the channels the BS will use with your phone in the future. The way phones use frequencies efficiently is how they achieve the speeds they do!

'''MS''' = Mobile station. A mobile device like your phone. The MS talks to the MsC via the BS. Lots and lots of acronyms.

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