BORSCHT

BORSCHT is an acronym for:

Battery feed
Overvoltage protection
Ringing
Supervison
Codec
Hybrid
Testing

The electronic functions collectively known as BORSCHT are used in Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) telephony signaling, line supervision and telephone terminal operation. BORSCHT circuitry is typically located on a telecommunications network line card and is increasingly integrated into a chipset by several semiconductor companies for low-cost implementation of a standard POTS telephone interface for non-traditional telephony networks such as cable television networks, fiber optic, VoIP and wireless local loop.

High voltage, low resistance and current requirements of many of these functions are particularly burdensome to IC implementations. First generation digital and office switches reduced the termination costs by using analog switching (concentrators) to common codes.