§ 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.

   (g) Interconnected VoIP Service Providers. (1) All interconnected VoIP
   service  providers  shall  submit electronically a Notification to the
   Commission:

   (i) Within 240 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 potentially affects a 9-1-1 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 9-1-1 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; or

   (ii)  Within 24 hours 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:

   (A) That potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of interconnected
   VoIP service and results in complete loss of service; or

   (B)  That  potentially  affects any special offices and facilities (in
   accordance with paragraphs § 4.5(a) through (d)).

   (2) 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 Final reports shall comply with all of the
   requirements of § 4.11.

   (h) Covered 911 service providers. In addition to any other obligations
   imposed in this section, within thirty minutes of discovering an outage that
   potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in § 4.5), all covered
   911 service providers (as defined in § 12.4(a)(4) of this chapter) shall
   notify  as  soon  as  possible  but no later than thirty minutes after
   discovering the outage any official who has been designated by the affected
   911 special facility as the provider's contact person(s) for communications
   outages at that facility and convey all available information that may be
   useful in mitigating the effects of the outage, as well as a name, telephone
   number, and email address at which the service provider can be reached for
   follow-up. The covered 911 service provider shall communicate additional
   material information to the affected 911 special facility as it becomes
   available, but no later than two hours after the initial contact. This
   information shall include the nature of the outage, its best-known cause,
   the geographic scope of the outage, the estimated time for repairs, and any
   other information that may be useful to the management of the affected
   facility. All notifications shall be transmitted by telephone and in writing
   via electronic means in the absence of another method mutually agreed upon
   in advance by the 911 special facility and the covered 911 service provider.

   [ 69 FR 70338 , Dec. 3, 2004, as amended at  77 FR 25097 , Apr. 27, 2012;  79 FR 3130 , Jan. 17, 2014;  79 FR 7589 , Feb. 10, 2014]

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