Goto Section: 4.7 | 4.11 | Table of Contents
FCC 4.9
Revised as of October 1, 2011
Goto Year:2010 |
2012
§ 4.9 Outage reporting requirements--threshold criteria.
(a) Cable. All cable communications providers shall submit
electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of
discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own,
operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes
duration that:
(1) Potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of telephony
service;
(2) Affects at least 1,350 DS3 minutes;
(3) Potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in
accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5); or
(4) Potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in paragraph
(e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as
possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has
been designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the
provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility,
and they shall convey to that person all available information that may
be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the
effects of the outage on callers to that facility. (DS3 minutes and
user minutes are defined in paragraphs (d) and (e) of § 4.7.) Not later
than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit
electronically an Initial Communications Outage Report to the
Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage,
the provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage
Report to the Commission. The Notification and the Initial and Final
reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.
(b) IXC or LEC tandem facilities. In the case of IXC or LEC tandem
facilities, providers must, if technically possible, use real-time
blocked calls to determine whether criteria for reporting an outage
have been reached. Providers must report IXC and LEC tandem outages of
at least 30 minutes duration in which at least 90,000 calls are blocked
or at least 1,350 DS3-minutes are lost. For interoffice facilities
which handle traffic in both directions and for which blocked call
information is available in one direction only, the total number of
blocked calls shall be estimated as twice the number of blocked calls
determined for the available direction. Providers may use historic
carried call load data for the same day(s) of the week and the same
time(s) of day as the outage, and for a time interval not older than 90
days preceding the onset of the outage, to estimate blocked calls
whenever it is not possible to obtain real-time blocked call counts.
When using historic data, providers must report incidents where at
least 30,000 calls would have been carried during a time interval with
the same duration of the outage. (DS3 minutes are defined in paragraph
(d) of § 4.7.) In situations where, for whatever reason, real-time and
historic carried call load data are unavailable to the provider, even
after a detailed investigation, the provider must determine the carried
call load based on data obtained in the time interval between the onset
of the outage and the due date for the final report; this data must
cover the same day of the week, the same time of day, and the same
duration as the outage. Justification that such data accurately
estimates the traffic that would have been carried at the time of the
outage had the outage not occurred must be available on request. If
carried call load data cannot be obtained through any of the methods
described, for whatever reason, then the provider shall report the
outage.
(c) Satellite. (1) All satellite operators shall submit electronically
a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that
they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease,
or otherwise utilize, of an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that
manifests itself as a failure of any of the following key system
elements: One or more satellite transponders, satellite beams,
inter-satellite links, or entire satellites. In addition, all
Mobile-Satellite Service ("MSS") satellite operators shall submit
electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of
discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own,
operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, of an outage of at least 30
minutes duration that manifests itself as a failure of any gateway
earth station, except in the case where other earth stations at the
gateway location are used to continue gateway operations within 30
minutes of the onset of the failure.
(2) All satellite communications providers shall submit electronically
a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that
they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease,
or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that
manifests itself as:
(i) A loss of complete accessibility to at least one satellite or
transponder;
(ii) A loss of a satellite communications link that potentially affects
at least 900,000 user-minutes (as defined in § 4.7(d)) of either
telephony service or paging service;
(iii) Potentially affecting any special offices and facilities (in
accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5) other than
airports; or
(iv) Potentially affecting a 911 special facility (as defined in (e) of
§ 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by
telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been
designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the
provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility,
and they shall convey to that person all available information that may
be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the
effects of the outage on callers to that facility.
(3) Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the operator
and/or provider shall submit electronically an Initial Communications
Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after
discovering the outage, the operator and/or provider shall submit
electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission.
(4) The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply
with all of the requirements of § 4.11.
(5) Excluded from these outage-reporting requirements are those
satellites, satellite beams, inter-satellite links, MSS gateway earth
stations, satellite networks, and transponders that are used
exclusively for intra-corporate or intra-organizational private
telecommunications networks, for the one-way distribution of video or
audio programming, or for other non-covered services (that is, when
they are never used to carry common carrier voice or paging
communications).
(d) Signaling system 7. Signaling System 7 (SS7) providers shall submit
electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of
discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own,
operate, lease, or otherwise utilize an outage of at least 30 minutes
duration that is manifested as the generation of at least 90,000
blocked calls based on real-time traffic data or at least 30,000 lost
calls based on historic carried loads. In cases where a third-party SS7
provider cannot directly estimate the number of blocked calls, the
third-party SS7 provider shall use 500,000 real-time lost MTP messages
as a surrogate for 90,000 real-time blocked calls, or 167,000 lost MTP
messages on a historical basis as a surrogate for 30,000 lost calls
based on historic carried loads. Historic carried load data or the
number of lost MTP messages on a historical basis shall be for the same
day(s) of the week and the same time(s) of day as the outage, and for a
time interval not older than 90 days preceding the onset of the outage.
In situations where, for whatever reason, real-time and historic data
are unavailable to the provider, even after a detailed investigation,
the provider must determine the carried load based on data obtained in
the time interval between the onset of the outage and the due date for
the final report; this data must cover the same day of the week and the
same time of day as the outage. If this cannot be done, for whatever
reason, the outage must be reported. Justification that such data
accurately estimates the traffic that would have been carried at the
time of the outage had the outage not occurred must be available on
request. Finally, whenever a pair of STPs serving any communications
provider becomes isolated from a pair of interconnected STPs that serve
any other communications provider, for at least 30 minutes duration,
each of these communications providers shall submit electronically a
Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering such
outage. Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the
provider(s) shall submit electronically an Initial Communications
Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after
discovering the outage, the provider(s) shall submit electronically a
Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification
and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the
requirements of § 4.11.
(e) Wireless. All wireless service providers shall submit
electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of
discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own,
operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes
duration:
(1) Of a Mobile Switching Center (MSC);
(2) That potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of either
telephony and associated data (2nd generation or lower) service or
paging service;
(3) That affects at least 1,350 DS3 minutes;
(4) That potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in
accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5) other than
airports through direct service facility agreements; or
(5) That potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in (e)
of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by
telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been
designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the
provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility,
and they shall convey to that person all available information that may
be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the
effects of the outage on callers to that facility. (DS3 minutes and
user minutes are defined in paragraphs (d) and (e) of § 4.7.) In
determining the number of users potentially affected by a failure of a
switch, a concentration ratio of 8 shall be applied. For providers of
paging service solely, however, the following outage criteria shall
apply instead of those in paragraphs (b)(1) through (b)(3) of this
section. Notification must be submitted if the failure of a switch for
at least 30 minutes duration potentially affects at least 900,000
user-minutes. Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the
provider shall submit electronically an Initial Communications Outage
Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering
the outage, the provider shall submit electronically a Final
Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification and
the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements
of § 4.11.
(f) Wireline. All wireline communications providers shall submit
electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of
discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own,
operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes
duration that:
(1) Potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of either
telephony or paging;
(2) Affects at least 1,350 DS3 minutes;
(3) Potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in
accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5); or
(4) Potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in paragraph
(e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as
possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has
been designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the
provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility,
and the provider shall convey to that person all available information
that may be useful to the management of the affected facility in
mitigating the effects of the outage on efforts to communicate with
that facility. (DS3 minutes and user minutes are defined in paragraphs
(d) and (e) of § 4.7.) Not later than 72 hours after discovering the
outage, the provider shall submit electronically an Initial
Communications Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty
days after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit
electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission.
The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with
all of the requirements of § 4.11.
Goto Section: 4.7 | 4.11
Goto Year: 2010 |
2012
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