CTIA

The CTIA is an non-profit organization that supports the wireless industry in the United States. They loby the government on behalf of the industry as well as put on industry shows like the CTIA Wireless show in the spring and the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show that takes place in the fall. CTIA officially stands for Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, but the group refrains from using the long form of its name these days.

carrier

Carrier is a term commonly used in the United States and Canada to refer to a company that provides voice or data services. Carriers can be companies that operate wirelessly or over traditional wired land lines. Examples of such are T-Mobile, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner. Also known as: "network carrier", "wireless carrier"

CSTN (Color Super-Twisted Nematic)

Color super-twisted nematic (CSTN) is the type of passive matrix LCD used by many early color capable mobile devices, and is still used on some current and cheaper devices. CSTN displays are prone to ghosting, or streaking, when images on the display change quickly, and offer relatively poor contrast and color saturation.

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)

CDMA stands for code division multiple access, a form of multiplexing that is based on mathematics rather than time slicing (used by TDMA) or frequency hopping. The term is commonly used to refer to phone networks that make use of this form of multiplexing, such as those run in the United States by Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel. CDMA phone networks make use of 1xRTT, 1xEV-DO, and 1xEV-DV for data transfer. The core CDMA technology was developed by Qualcomm.

CSD (Circuit-Switched Data)

CSD, or Circuit-Switched Data, was a system used on early GSM networks to provide data access to mobile devices by allowing them to place a data call. CSD was capable of uplink and downlink rates of up to 9.6kbps. Later replaced by the faster HSCSD variant, circuit-switched data on wireless networks were eventually made completely obsolete by packet based networks such as GPRS and EDGE.

CCD (Charge-Coupled Device)

A CCD is a type of image sensor used in digital cameras. When speaking of low cost devices, CCD image sensors tend to provide better image quality than comparable CMOS models, though they require more power to utilize. As such, devices such as mobile phones tend to use CMOS sensors. Further refinements of CMOS image sensor technology will likely lead to CCD technology eventually being abandoned as far as cameras are concerned.