service provider

service provider

An organization that provides some kind of communications service, storage service or processing service or any combination of the three. Examples are a local or long distance telephone company (see common carrier), Internet service provider (see ISP), application service provider (see ASP) and storage service provider (see SSP).

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service provider [′sər·vəs prə‚vīd·ər]

(computer science)

An organization that provides access to a wide-area network, such as the Internet.

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(communications)

service provider - An organisation that provides a service by telephone, such as an 0800 (toll free) number. The service provider buys the services of a telecom supplier (e.g. BT) but advertises the service and deals with the calls itself. Increasingly, service providers are now also managing their advanced call-routing.