sion. However, voice packets can be carrier, cell phone, and paging company must prioritized. pay a percentage of its interstate and interna- tional revenues to the fund. A separate fund, VOLTE (Voice over LTE) The Connect America Fund, has been estab- A 3rd Generation Partnership Program proto- lished for residential broadband. col used to carry packetized voice (VoIP) on LTE networks. UTP (Unshielded Twisted-Pair) VPN (Virtual Private Network) Most inside telephones and computers are Provides the functions and features of a connected to one another via unshielded private network without the need for dedi- twisted-pair copper cabling. The twists in cated private lines between corporate sites the copper cables cut down on the electri- or between corporate sites and remote users. cal interference of signals carried on pairs Each site connects to the network provider's of wire near one another and near electrical network rather than directly to another corpo- equipment. rate location. UWB (Ultra-Wideband) VRU (Voice Response Unit) A wireless service that supports higher data Provides information to callers based on rates than RFID and can be used for some of their touch-tone or spoken commands. VRUs the same applications. However, widespread query computers for responses and "speak" adoption is held up by a lack of an agreed- them to callers. For example, people often upon standard. It is also used by the military can call their bank or credit card company to and by governments for tracking and for find- find out their balance or to learn if a payment ing people trapped under rubble. has been received. VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) WAN (Wide Area Network) Groups of devices programmed in Layer 2 Connects computers located in different cit- switches for special treatment in enterprise ies, states, and countries. networks. They are not grouped together in physical networks; rather, they are grouped WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) together in software for common treat- A protocol that defines how Internet sit