degradation in the ability of an end

user to establish and maintain a channel

of communications as a result of

failure or degradation in the performance

of a communications provider’s

network.

as major military installations,

key government facilities, nuclear

power plants, and those airports that

are listed as current primary (PR),

commercial service (CM), and reliever

(RL) airports in the FAA’s National

Plan of Integrated Airports Systems

(NPIAS) (as issued at least one calendar

year prior to the outage). The

member agencies of the National Communications

System (NCS) will determine

which of their locations are

‘‘major military installations’’ and

‘‘key government facilities.’’ 911 special

facilities are addressed separately

in paragraph (e) of this section.

(c) All outages that potentially affect

communications for at least 30 minutes

with any airport that qualifies as a

‘‘special office and facility’’ pursuant

to the preceding paragraph shall be reported

in accordance with the provisions

of §§ 4.11 and 4.13.

(d) A mission-affecting outage is defined

as an outage that is deemed critical

to national security/emergency

preparedness (NS/EP) operations of the

affected facility by the National Communications

System member agency

operating the affected facility.

(e) An outage that potentially affects

a 911 special facility occurs whenever:

(1) There is a loss of communications

to PSAP(s) potentially affecting at

least 900,000 user-minutes and: The failure

is neither at the PSAP(s) nor on

the premises of the PSAP(s); no reroute

for all end users was available;

and the outage lasts 30 minutes or

more; or

(2) There is a loss of 911 call processing

capabilities in one or more E–911

tandems/selective routers for at least

30 minutes duration; or

(3) One or more end-office or MSC

switches or host/remote clusters is isolated

from 911 service for at least 30

minutes and potentially affects at least

900,000 user-minutes; or

(4) There is a loss of ANI/ALI (associated

name and location information)

and/or a failure of location determination

equipment, including Phase II

equipment, for at least 30 minutes and

potentially affecting at least 900,000

user-minutes (provided that the ANI/

ALI or location determination equipment

was then currently deployed and

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in use, and the failure is neither at the

PSAP(s) or on the premises of the

PSAP(s)).

as the telephone numbers used by communications

providers to perform internal

administrative or operational

functions necessary to maintain reasonable

quality of service standards.

the telephone numbers working in the

Public Switched Telephone Network

under an agreement such as a contract

or tariff at the request of specific end

users or customers for their use. This

excludes numbers that are not yet

working but have a service order pending.

are defined as the mathematical result

of multiplying the duration of an outage,

expressed in minutes, by the sum

of the number of assigned numbers (defined

in paragraph (b) of this section)

potentially affected by the outage and

the number of administrative numbers

(defined in paragraph (a) of this section)

potentially affected by the outage.

‘‘Assigned telephone number minutes’’

can alternatively be calculated

as the mathematical result of multiplying

the duration of an outage, expressed

in minutes, by the number of

working telephone numbers potentially

affected by the outage, where working

telephone numbers are defined as the

telephone numbers, including DID

numbers, working immediately prior to

the outage.

mathematical result of multiplying the

duration of an outage, expressed in

minutes, by the number of previously

operating DS3 circuits that were affected

by the outage.

(1) Assigned telephone number minutes

(as defined in paragraph (c) of this

section), for telephony and for those

paging networks in which each individual

user is assigned a telephone

number;

(2) The mathematical result of multiplying

the duration of an outage, expressed

in minutes, by the number of

end users potentially affected by the

outage, for all other forms of communications.

to be the sum of all telephone

numbers that can originate, or terminate

telecommunications. This includes,

for example, all working telephone

numbers on the customer’s side

of a PBX, or Centrex, or similar arrangement.

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.