English Tech/Engineering Telecom(munications)

Comes from an analysis of performance of a segment of a telecom's network. That segment was partly financed by an outside party, which instead of lending the money chose a percentage of revenue from that segment. However, the parties are now at loggerheads over how much the outsider should be getting.
"In the illustration provided by the Expert, it shows the capacity of each link at the present date, extrapolated backwards to the start date of the link. No ramping up of the capacity over time is included.
However, ramping should reasonably be included as it is highly unlikely that the current installed capacity was instantaneously filled up on the day it was switched on. More realistically, the capacity of a new link will increase over time to the current installed capacity. Ideally, this would be addressed with the fill factor, but the model structure adopted for arbitration purposes does not permit such granularity, and consequently, TELECOM decided to add a ramping factor as the closest reasonable approximation."
dictionary definitions of ramp are of little use. besides, if the past values are extrapolated backwords, this in itself suggests that the capacity indeed increased over time, as might be expected. this would rule out the meaning of ramping as gradual growth, or wouldn't it?