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Online Courses and Certifications FAQs and Policies
What are the system requirements?
Use the
free Chrome browser
- it's fast, with good results.
DO NOT USE Internet Explorer. IE causes errors, including not posting exam results.
How are Teracom Online Courses and Certifications organized?
Teracom Online Courses and Certifications are organized into Lessons, Courses and Packages.
Lessons
At the finest level, Teracom Online Courses are made up of Lessons. A Lesson corresponds roughly to one slide in an instructor-led presentation, one page in a student manual. Each Lesson is one download from the Learning Management System, and usually lasts 10 to 20 minutes. Lessons finish with informal quiz questions to help ensure key points are understood.
Courses
Lessons are grouped into Online Courses by topic. For example, Online Course “The OSI Layers and Protocol Stacks” consists of 14 Lessons starting with an introduction, then the idea of open systems, progressing through layered architectures and a lesson for each of the layers, and ending with lessons on how a protocol stack operates from a procedural point of view and from a bits point of view and standards organizations. Each Course ends with a course Exam, a set of multiple-choice questions chosen from a pool and shuffled in order so no two students see the same exam.
Packages
Courses are organized into packages. The "Telecom, Datacom and Networking for Non‑Engineers" Course Package is six courses in a package at a discounted price.
Certification Packages include a set of courses plus TCO Certification, Certificate, Letter of Reference and all of the other great benefits of TCO Certification. full details
What is a Certification Package?
A Certification Package is the set of exams required for a Certification, plus the Online Courses that correspond to the exams. When you purchase a Certification Package, the Online Courses and Exams are displayed together in your Dashboard. With the Unlimited Plan you can repeat the courses and/or exams, in any order.
What Certifications are available?
Pass the exam(s) required for the Certification.
Most exams are 10 multiple-choice questions taken out of a pool and shuffled in order.
Some certifications require multiple exams, for example CIPTS is 4 exams, CTNS is 6 exams and CTA is 16 exams.
Register for the Certification Exams by registering for a Certification Package (Courses+Exams) or Certification Exam (Exam only).
With the Unlimited Plan, you can repeat courses and/or exams - which means guaranteed to get certified if you're willing to learn.
How do I register for a Certification?
Can my registration be transferred to a different person?
Registrations for online courses and certifications are not transferable. Once a particular individual is registered, the name, email address and other personal information associated with their registration can not be changed.
How do I register for Online Courses?
How do I use the Online Catalog?
Please see the Catalog help page for full instructions.
If you're registering a group, you'll start with the Group Registration page to enter the names of the students before going to the catalog.
What is the Unlimited Plan?
What is the 100% Money-Back Guarantee?
If for any reason you are unsatisfied with your purchase of an Online Course or Online Certification Package, within 30 days of purchase you may request a full refund, as long as you have not written all of the exams and obtained a certification. If you want a refund, do not write the last exam of a certification. Applies to Online Courses. Does not apply to Exams, Exams with free courses, or Trial offers. Limited to one refund per product per person. full terms and conditions
Do I have to pay a yearly fee to maintain my certification?
No. Unlike other certifications, the TCO and Teracom do not require you to pay a yearly fee. Once earned, your certification is valid for life.
Can I buy Online Courses one at a time?
Can I pay in installments?
Visa, MasterCard, American Express and any other form of payment supported by PayPal is accepted. We can also accept payment by check and Purchase Order from government and large corporations in the USA and Canada.
How do I access Online Course Lessons and Certification Exams?
Online Courses and Exams are both accessed via your personal Dashboard.
The dashboard shows the Online Courses and/or Certification Exams that you are registered for, your progress or status for each, plus links to the lessons or exam you are currently working on.
To see your personal Dashboard, sign in to or join myTeracom.
A link to your dashboard is displayed after you log in.
How do I use the Dashboard?
How do I get my Certificate and Letter of Reference?
Once you have successfully completed all of the Course Exams in the Certification Package, a “Get Certificate” button and a "Get Letter of Reference" button appear in your Dashboard below the list of courses. This will allow you to download a high-resolution PDF of your certificate and letter of reference that you can include with emailed résumés or print and frame.
How do I get the free bonus Online Courses and Certification?
How do I get the included CTA Certification?
The CTA Certification Exam is the "final exam" for Course 101 and the CTA Certification Package, and the Telecom 101 textbook. It is included at no additional charge when you attend a seminar or purchase the CTA Certification Package. Procedure for getting your CTA Exam
No worries. You may re-take Course Exams as necessary with no time limits for Unlimited Plan.
Can I skip the lessons and just take the Certification Exam?
Do you have group discounts?
Yes, a special discount of 40% is offered for purchase of 5 seats of more for all online courses and certifications. price list
To enter a group registration, you will be guided through the process of entering the students' names, then taken to the online catalog to add the desired Certification Package or Course(s) to your shopping cart, then apply coupon 1269 to get the discounted price and check out.
If you already have a myTeracom account,
click here to start your group registration
.
If you don't have a myTeracom account, please join myTeracom first. You may then click the link above, or the "group registration" link in the Online Learning section of your myTeracom home page displayed after you sign in.
The system will guide you through entering your peoples’ names and selecting the training. Once the process is complete, myTeracom accounts and individual orders are created for each team member, and instructions for accessing their accounts are automatically emailed to them.
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Please contact us for larger groups, payment by check or PO or any questions.
We are happy to help.
I want my team of 5 people to take this training. How do I register them?
You'll enter a group registration, where you will be guided through the process of entering the students' names, then taken to the online catalog to add the desired Certification Package or Course(s) to your shopping cart.
Once you have entered your group in the system and chosen the training product, you will apply coupon number 1269 to get the 40% group discount, then check out.
If you already have a myTeracom account,
click here to start your group registration
.
If you don't have a myTeracom account, please join myTeracom first. You may then click the link above, or the "group registration" link in the Online Learning section of your myTeracom home page displayed after you sign in.
The system will guide you through entering your peoples’ names and selecting the training. Once the process is complete, myTeracom accounts and individual orders are created for each team member, and instructions for accessing their accounts are automatically emailed to them.
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How can I buy 20 seats if I don't know the names of all the students yet?
The myTeracom registration system is designed to handle exactly this situation, with the "Add Seats" button during the first step of group registration when you are entering the students.
You'll follow the procedure above for those team members you have information for, then use the "Add Seats" option, which creates "seats", basically ready-to-assign accounts for future students, like future hires. You can use these accounts anytime. There are no expiration dates.
These additional seats are associated with temporary user IDs. Subsequently, you may contact us anytime to “activate” these additional accounts for students one at a time or all together. more
This allows you to benefit from higher discounts by buying more seats, for now and upcoming needs.
Can I monitor the progress of my team?
Yes, if
you register them. Every Online Learning order has two users associated with it: the Learner user and the Registered-by user. A user can view the status of any order where they are either the Learner or the Registered-by user. This means that if you use the Team Training / Group Registration function, you will be the Registered-by user on any registrations you enter and so can see their status.
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Is there management reporting?
Yes. With five clicks of a mouse you can export an Excel spreadsheet or PDF file showing the status and results of all users you registered.
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Once a person is registered, can I switch their registration to a different person?
Registrations are not transferable. The Learner can not be changed on a registration once it is assigned to a particular person.
Can I upload this to my company's system?
Yes, but your company must purchase a site license and sign a non-disclosure agreement first.
Some tweaking of the reporting interface might be necessary to integrate with your system.
Please contact us to find out more.
For small and medium organizations, and individuals, there is no need to put the courses on your system. The myTeracom Learning Management System hosting the courses on Teracom’s servers in a high-quality data center in the USA is included at no extra charge. As long as you can run Google Chrome and download a web page, mp3 audio and mp4 video files from the Internet, anyone in your company can take the training by registering on myTeracom, and the content will be served from Teracom’s Learning Management System.
What are the group discount prices?
How do I get the 5-students unlimited package pricing?
To get the 5-students unlimited package price, start with the
Group Registration page
to enter the names of the students then go to the catalog to select the course, then apply coupon number 1269 at checkout to get the 40% discount.
Does this training qualify for CPE credits?
Is this available Internationally?
Yes. The myTeracom Online Learning System was specifically designed to work anywhere in the world. This is an advantage over instructor-led courses, since there are no shipping costs, customs duties or immigration letters to worry about.
Do you have an Online Course / elearning / e-learning catalog?
It says the exam has started in another window, but I don't see it, and result is Fail
If you click the link to begin an exam in the Learning Management System dashboard, and see a notice that the exam has started in another window - but don't see the other window, and your exam result is recorded in your dashboard as "Fail", this is caused either by
(a) Your system is incompatible.
Solution: please download Google Chrome browser and use that. Other browsers are not compatible.
(b) Your system is compatible, but a popup blocker is preventing the exam window from opening. Please disable your popup blocker and try again.
(c) You walked away from or closed your browser before finishing the exam.
Don't panic. You may re-take Course Exams as necessary with no time limits for Unlimited Plan. Click the reset button beside the exam in your dashboard.
Instructor-Led Seminar Course FAQs and Policies
What are the public seminar class hours?
For every seminar, EXCEPT WASHINGTON DC and WASHINGTON DC AREA: classes run from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm on each day. Please arrive 30 minutes earlier on the first day to sign-in and get your course material.
For Washington DC and Washington DC area ONLY: classes run from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm on each day. Please arrive 30 minutes earlier on the first day to sign-in and get your course material.
I called the hotel and they say they don't know anything about your meeting/seminar.
This is not unusual. To book meeting rooms, we deal with the sales, banquets or catering department at the hotel; frequently, they do not inform the hotel operator, reservations or front desk staff of upcoming meetings.
What is your public seminar cancellation policy?
You may make changes to your registration. Some changes incur a change fee as specified in the table below, depending on the type of change and the number of working days before the seminar. The change fee is a percentage of the total on your invoice and is due immediately upon making a change. Change requests must be in writing.
|
Number of working days before seminar |
| Type of change |
11 or more |
2 to 10 |
less than 2 |
| Substitution (different person, same seminar) |
no change fee |
no change fee |
no change fee |
Transfer to another seminar
(same course, within 6 months) |
no change fee |
25% |
50% |
| Cancellation, if you did not order the optional textbook or early course book delivery. |
no cancellation fee |
50% |
100% |
| Cancellation fee, with early course book delivery or optional textbook delivery before seminar. |
50% |
100% |
100% |
Cancellation by Teracom
We do our utmost not to cancel seminars. On rare occasions, registration is insufficient to hold the seminar, and you will be notified before the seminar. In the unlikely event of illness or incapacity of the instructor or inability of the instructor to travel to the seminar due to airport closures, weather, terrorism or the like, the seminar will be re-scheduled. In both cases, you may have a full refund or transfer to another seminar.
Teracom will not be responsible for any travel costs or airline or hotel charges of any kind.
What are the tuition fees for public seminars?
Are travel, meals and accommodations included in the public seminar tuition fees?
Travel, meals and accommodations are not included.
Your tuition fee includes the training course, your course materials and coffee breaks. Lunch is on your own.
If you need a sleeping room, we recommend that you book a sleeping room at the hotel where the seminar is being held via the hotel's website. A link to the hotel is provided on the seminar schedule page. You may also telephone the hotel at the listed number. Alternate hotels may also be listed there.
We may have a "courtesy block" of rooms reserved under the name Teracom, or identified with a group code. Please check the seminar schedule page to see if this is mentioned. The "courtesy block" are rooms that can be reserved at a preferential rate until a cutoff date, which is usually about three weeks before the seminar.
If there is no mention of a preferred rate or group code on the schedule page, the reservations clerks at the hotel will not be aware of the Teracom meeting.
In some cases, the hotel where the seminar is being held may be sold out of sleeping rooms.
In this case, please check the seminar schedule listing on teracomtraining.com, where we may have already posted links for sleeping rooms nearby. Or call us: 1-877-412-2700. We're glad to help.
Car rental: We have a corporate rate with Avis. Go to www.avis.com and use Teracom's "AWD number": C136022.
Does the seminar qualify for Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits?
Yes, Teracom's courses are Continuing Professional Education (CPE)
Every state association for every profession has the ability to define their own criteria for qualification. The criteria jointly developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) are reasonable and could be applied to any state and any profession. Those criteria measure credits in "contact hours".
Based on the AICPA-NASBA Standards For Continuing Professional Education Programs, that measure credits in contact hours, successful completion of our courses result in the following CPE credits:
Instructor-led Courses, 3 days: 21 CPE contact hours credit
Instructor-led Courses, 2 days: 14 CPE contact hours credit
These CPE hours might have to be divided by 7 to translate them into CPE days if credits are measured in days by a particular state association.
A 1-semester, 1-credit university course is 15 CPE contact hours credit in the AICPA-NASBA criteria, therefore, if a particular state association measures CPE credits that way, the credits resulting from successful completion of our courses would be contact hours /15.
Instructor-led Course, 3 days: 1.4 1-semester-course-equivalent CPE credits
Instructor-led Course, 2 days: 1.0 1-semester-course-equivalent CPE credits
Please note that a particular state association for a particular profession may not accept Teracom's courses for CPE credit. (Though they should - our courses are CPE). If in the unlikely event that any work is required to get our courses certified with a particular state association for a particular profession, that work is the responsibility of the student; there is no component in our course fees for that work.
Is there a discount for registering more than one person?
Yes, when registering two or more people for the same class, same location and same date, you are eligible for a discount on every registration.
You can get the discount online by using the correct coupon number during registration.
Seminar group discount coupon numbers
How many people do we need to have to hold an onsite seminar?
If you have 5 or more people to train, it will most likely be less expensive to have an onsite training session than send five people to a public seminar, when airfare, hotel and meals are taken into account. If your people wouldn't have to travel, then it's breakeven at 10.
There are other advantages to holding an onsite seminar:
- you can have basically as many people as you want for the price of 10
- everyone will be up to a common speed, with a common vocabulary
-
it will be a strong team-building exercise
- pre- and post-training online tests with management reports are available,
providing concrete assessment of your team's readiness and competence,
identifying weak links and proving return on training investment.
To get more information on onsite training and an automatic pricing quote,
please submit the "get more info" form and visit the onsite training page.
Do you sell seminar workbooks separately from the courses?
Teracom's very popular Telecom 101 textbook covers the same topics as our main core training Course 101. This is the way to get the Course 101 materials separate from the course.
We sell the workbooks for Courses separately, at a cost of US$179 per book, for the use of an individual only, not for use as courseware for teaching classes.
Please contact us for more information.
How do I get my free bonus Online Courses and Certification?
Textbook Shipping FAQs and Policies
Can I cancel an order?
What is the return policy on textbooks?
An order can be cancelled if it has not been shipped. Once shipped, an order can not be cancelled. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all sales are final. We do not accept returns of items that are not defective.
All products are guaranteed for one year. Contact us to obtain a Return Materials Authorization (RMA) number and ship any defective items to us prepaid with signature proof of delivery, and it will be our pleasure to replace them with the same item within one year of purchase.
Are there any extra fees for International orders?
The shipping charges for international orders are of course higher. In addition, international customers are responsible for any taxes or duties on receipt of shipment, as those fees are imposed by your country and not by us.
Consider the Online Courses instead, as there are no shipping or customs fees with Online Courses.
When will you ship my order?
Our commitment is to ship orders within 2 working days of reception. We usually try to ship before the end of the day if the order is received before 2 pm New York time and by the end of the next working day if received later in the day.
What does "1-Day" or "Next-day" shipping mean?
Next-day shipping means that your order will be processed and leave our warehouse within 2 working days and will ship using FedEx or UPS standard "Next-Day" delivery service where available to the lower 48 states and Canadian provinces.
Typically, if you place an order Monday through Thursday before 2 pm New York time, chances are good that you will receive it by 11 am the next day. If you place an order on Friday at 5 pm, you will likely receive it the following Tuesday. 99% of our customers experience this service level.
At the maximum, if you place an order on a Monday, it will leave our warehouse on Wednesday and you will receive it before end of business on Thursday. If you place an order on Friday, it will leave our warehouse by Tuesday and you will receive it before end of business on Wednesday.
In the unlikely event you do not receive the shipment within this maximum delay due to no fault of your own, your shipping charges will be refunded. This is your only remedy. You are not entitled to refuse delivery and effectively return the product to us for a refund. If you do not receive the shipment by the "typical" time in the second paragraph, please
contact us immediately. We will investigate with the carrier and resend the shipment priority overnight if necessary. Getting your training materials to you ASAP is our goal.
What does "2-Day" shipping mean?
Please add one working day to the description of 1-day shipping above.
How do I get my free bonus Online Courses and Certification?
Can you ship to APO addresses?
Yes, we ship to APO addresses, using the US Postal Service.
Are your training products relevant and compatible with telecoms technologies in my country?
With the advent of IP-based telecom, including MPLS, IP and Ethernet, the same technology is used in all countries, so the answer to that question is "yes", they are relevant and compatible.
There are only two areas where there are significant differences between North America (NA) and the Rest of the World (ROW):
- Telecom Industry: this one short chapter is North America specific.
- SONET vs. SDH and T1 vs. E1 : these transmission and access technologies respectively are different in NA and ROW. We go over the NA technologies and use them as examples, but do mention the ROW technologies and how they relate. These are legacy technologies on the way out.
General FAQs and Policies
What if there is a typo, error or discrepancy on a web page or other document?
A typo, error or unintentional discrepancy on a web page, graphic, brochure or other document does not form part of any offer; E&OE in the common law legal world (errors and omissions excepted), "sauf à parfaire" under civil code. You will have the opportunity to purchase the good or service in question at the current correct price.
Can I get a refund? Are there administrative charges?
Refunds will be made in conformance with the policies on this page. When a refund is due following an action by Teracom, e.g. a seminar cancelled, there are no administrative charges. When a refund is requested following a customer action, e.g. canceling an order after it has been paid but before it has been shipped, or canceling a registration after it has been paid, a 10% administrative fee will be deducted from the amount refunded.
No administrative fee is levied in connection with the Online Courses 30-day Money-Back Guarantee. Note that no refunds are provided under Online Courses 30-day Money-Back Guarantee if you complete a certification.
