In telecommunication, the term steady-state condition has the following meanings: * In a communications circuit, a condition in which some specified characteristic of a condition, such as a value, rate, periodicity, or amplitude, exhibits only negligible change over an arbitrarily long period. * In an electric circuit, the condition that exists after all initial transients or fluctuating conditions have damped out, and all currents, voltages, or fields remain essentially constant, or oscillate uniformly. * In fiber optics, synonym for equilibrium mode distribution.