I think it's a replacement for って, not て, and it would be more accurate to say that って is the informal form of というのは. It's the spoken equivalent of quotation marks. When you use it, you are saying that the phrase that precedes it was spoken or written by someone else.
An example could be found by translating your original question:
「というのは」ってなんですか。
What is "to iu no wa"?