The world of wireless, spectrum and radio has so many acronyms and abbreviations that Wireless Waffle thought it might be useful to provide an alphabetical glossary of terms to help explain what on Earth is going on in this complex and complicated field of electromagnetic mechanics.

• CEPT - Considers Every Point Tortuously - A largely technical organisation whose job is to spend so long pontificating over matters that whatever it is they were doing in the first place has been long forgotten by the time they have finished.
• DAB - Dribble And Bibble - A radio broadcasting technology in which all music and speech, no matter how beautiful, is converted into a stream of incomprehensible bubbling sounds. Not completely dissimilar to GSM.
• DRM - Dribbles Really Magnificently - Another radio broadcasting technology that converts all sounds into incomprehensible bubbling sounds unless reception is perfect, which, oddly, it is specifically designed never to be.
• DSA - Doesn't Solve Anything - A method by which spectrum that the owners still need is offered to those who don't want it, in a way that makes it about as attractive as finding a sand-pit in the middle of the Sahara desert.
• DTT - Defunct Dated Technology - A technology for sending televisual entertainfold across the etheric airwaves to those wishing to watch Laurel and Hardy movies. Often uses SD - Sensual Depreviation - to convince users that it is better than nothing.
• ESA - Egotistical Space Aliens - An organisation which thinks that unless you own real-estate at least 30 km above the surface of the Earth, you can't possibly understand anything that passes through their extra-terrestrial minds.
• ESOA - Excellent Services Over All - The Platinum sponsor of this useful guide to acronyms and abbreviations, even if their satellites will eventually cause the death of George Clooney and near-death of Sandra Bullock.
• ETSI - Experts Testing Stupid Ideas - A European organisation that is forced, by law, to produce specifications for any idea that is thrown at it, no matter how outlandish or pointless (see GSM, IoT, UMTS, etc).
• GSM - Garbled Speech Mumbler - A mobile network which makes voice calls sound like they are coming from 20,000 leagues beneath the sea, so that future technologies can be hailed as being so much better. Also known as '2G' (twice garbled).
• GSMA - Greedy Spectrum Munching Androids - An organisation hell-bent on gobbling all spectrum in persuit of its end-goal of making all other wireless users kow-tow to its wanton soup.
• ITU - Insolvent and Terribly Unfashionable - A near-bankrupt agency of the United Nations which fleeces their members and then uses the proceeds to find ways to put those self-same members out of business.
• IoT - It's Ostensibly Toasters - The future of the internet in which toasters (and kettles and fridge-freezers) need to sent each other gigabytes of data and thus find ways of making you and I pay the mobile operators more money.
• LSA - Lazy Spectrum Administrations - A method by which regulators who are too lazy to do things properly try to find a back-door method of not having to arse about with auctions or any of that complicated nonsense.
• LTE - Licences Too Expensive - A mobile network that actually overcomes many of the faults of its predecessors, but for which the necessary spectrum licences require operators to re-mortgage their cell sites twice over.
• RSPG - Ruthlessley Spouting Pretentious Garbage - A European organisation which waits for other people to come up with ideas about spectrum management (no matter whether good or bad) and then claims them as their own.
• SETI - Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time - One of those acronyms where the letters don't match the description in English. You have to speak the southern Charon dialect of Borlorks for the acronym to make any more sense than their goals do.
• TACS - Terrifically Annoying Crackly Sound - A mobile network designed to intersperse voice calls with inane crackling noises making users believe that they are communicating on a system so hi-tech that the calls could come from Mars and be no worse.
• UMTS - Users Must Type Slowly - A mobile network that delivers internet content at speeds only impressive to those for whom typing is more difficult than remembering how to ask for two beers in Spanish whilst on holiday in Portugal.
• WSD - Works Sometimes Dmpff'lrrt - A highly risky and unproven way of using radio spectrum that may or may not be clear of other users to connect fridges, kettles and fridge-freezers together (see IoT).
• CTRL - Click To Release Leprechaun - A button on computer keyboards that most people believe has a technical function but is actually there as a way of allowing the Irish security services to spy on your every move.

OK, so the last one isn't in alphabetical order any more, or even necessarily true. Clearly this is a sign that we should leave it here and move on to something more productive or informative. Like whinging about WiFi or something!