burst line
Information and Communications / Society / Technology

A private communications exchange terminal that uses codified information and burst transmission. Television stations such as BBC have set up their own burst lines as a means of obtaining information from sources, and many businesses and individuals also use their own such network to collect information, rather than any public network. A burst line compresses and codes information in real time, transmits it, and then decompresses and decodes it in real time, with virtually no time lag between the sender and the receiver. Nearly all communications systems employ this method of coded communication, as the world stands on the verge of yet another information explosion. In order to maintain a high processing speed, video or images are not usually sent.