47 C.F.R. PART 4—DISRUPTIONS TO COMMUNICATIONS
Title 47 - Telecommunication
Authority: 47 U.S.C. 151, 154(i), 154(j), 154(o), 218, 219, 230, 256, 301, 302(a), 303(f), 303(g), 303(j), 303(r), 403, 621(b)(3), and 621(d), unless otherwise noted.
Source: 69 FR 70338, Dec. 3, 2004, unless otherwise noted.
In this part, the Federal Communications Commission is setting forth requirements pertinent to the reporting of disruptions to communications and to the reliability and security of communications infrastructures. Reports filed under this part will be presumed to be confidential. Public access to reports filed under this part may be sought only pursuant to the procedures set forth in 47 CFR §0.461. Notice of any requests for inspection of outage reports will be provided pursuant to 47 CFR 0.461(d)(3). (a) Cable communications providers are cable service providers that also provide circuit-switched telephony. Also included are affiliated and non-affiliated entities that maintain or provide communications networks or services used by the provider in offering telephony. (b) Communications provider is an entity that provides for a fee to one or more unaffiliated entities, by radio, wire, cable, satellite, and/or lightguide: two-way voice and/or data communications, paging service, and/or SS7 communications. (c) IXC or LEC tandem facilities refer to tandem switches (or their equivalents) and interoffice facilities used in the provision of interexchange or local exchange communications. (d) Satellite communications providers use space stations as a means of providing the public with communications, such as telephony and paging. Also included are affiliated and non-affiliated entities that maintain or provide communications networks or services used by the provider in offering such communications. “Satellite operators” refer to entities that operate space stations but do not necessarily provide communications services directly to end users. (e) Signaling System 7 (SS7) is a signaling system used to control telecommunications networks. It is frequently used to “set up,” process, control, and terminate circuit-switched telecommunications, including but not limited to domestic and international telephone calls (irrespective of whether the call is wholly or in part wireless, wireline, local, long distance, or is carried over cable or satellite infrastructure), SMS text messaging services, 8XX number type services, local number portability, VoIP signaling gateway services, 555 number type services, and most paging services. For purposes of this rule part, SS7 refers to both the SS7 protocol and the packet networks through which signaling information is transported and switched or routed. It includes future modifications to the existing SS7 architecture that will provide the functional equivalency of the SS7 services and network elements that exist as of August 4, 2004. SS7 communications providers are subject to the provisions of this part 4 regardless of whether or not they provide service directly to end users. Also subject to part 4 of the Commission's rules are affiliated and non-affiliated entities that maintain or provide communications networks or services used by the SS7 provider in offering SS7 communications. (f) Wireless service providers include Commercial Mobile Radio Service communications providers that use cellular architecture and CMRS paging providers. In particular, they include Cellular Radio Telephone Service (part 22 of the Commission's Rules) providers; Personal Communications Service (PCS) (part 24) providers; those Special Mobile Radio Service (part 90) providers that meet the definition of “covered CMRS” providers pursuant to §§20.18(a), 52.21, and 52.31 of the Commission's rules, those private paging (part 90) providers that are treated as CMRS providers (see §20.9 of this chapter); and narrowband PCS providers (part 24) of this chapter. Also included are affiliated and non-affiliated entities that maintain or provide communications networks or services used by the provider in offering such communications. (g) Wireline communications providers offer terrestrial communications through direct connectivity, predominantly by wire, coaxial cable, or optical fiber, between the serving central office (as defined in the appendix to part 36 of this chapter) and end user location(s). Also included are affiliated and non-affiliated entities that maintain or provide communications networks or services used by the provider in offering such communications. (h) Exclusion of equipment manufacturers or vendors. Excluded from the requirements of this part 4 are those equipment manufacturers or vendors that do not maintain or provide communications networks or services used by communications providers in offering communications. (a) Outage is defined as a significant 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. (b) Special offices and facilities are defined 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 in use, and the failure is neither at the PSAP(s) or on the premises of the PSAP(s)). (a) Administrative numbers are defined as the telephone numbers used by communications providers to perform internal administrative or operational functions necessary to maintain reasonable quality of service standards. (b) Assigned numbers are defined as 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. (c) Assigned telephone number minutes 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. (d) DS3 minutes are defined as the 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. (e) User minutes are defined as: (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. (f) Working telephone numbers are defined 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. (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. Notification and Initial and Final Communications Outage Reports shall be submitted by a person authorized by the communications provider to submit such reports to the Commission. The person submitting the Final report to the Commission shall also be authorized by the provider to legally bind the provider to the truth, completeness, and accuracy of the information contained in the report. Each Final report shall be attested by the person submitting the report that he/she has read the report prior to submitting it and on oath deposes and states that the information contained therein is true, correct, and accurate to the best of his/her knowledge and belief and that the communications provider on oath deposes and states that this information is true, complete, and accurate. The Notification shall provide: the name of the reporting entity; the date and time of onset of the outage; a brief description of the problem; service affects; the geographic area affected by the outage; and a contact name and contact telephone number by which the Commission's technical staff may contact the reporting entity. The Initial and Final Reports shall contain the information required in this part 4. The Initial report shall contain all pertinent information then available on the outage and shall be submitted in good faith. The Final report shall contain all pertinent information on the outage, including any information that was not contained in, or that has changed from that provided in, the Initial report. The Notification and the Initial and Final Communications Outage Reports are to be submitted electronically to the Commission. “Submitted electronically” refers to submission of the information using Commission-approved Web-based outage report templates. If there are technical impediments to using the Web-based system during the Notification stage, then a written Notification to the Commission by email, FAX, or courier may be used; such Notification shall contain the information required. All hand-deliverd Notifications and Initial and Final Communications Outage Reports, shall be addressed to the Federal Communications Commission, The Office of Secretary, Attention: Edmond J. Thomas, Chief, Office of Engineering & Technology, 236 Massachusetts Ave., NE., Suite 110, Washington, DC 20002. Electronic filing shall be effectuated in accordance with procedures that are specified by the Commission by public notice. Reports by the National Communications System (NCS) and by special offices and facilities (other than 911 special offices and facilities) of outages potentially affecting them (see paragraphs (a) through (d) of §4.5) shall be made according to the following procedures: (a) When there is a mission-affecting outage, the affected facility will report the outage to the NCS and call the communications provider in order to determine if the outage is expected to last 30 minutes. If the outage is not expected to, and does not, last 30 minutes, it will not be reported to the Commission. If it is expected to last 30 minutes or does last 30 minutes, the NCS, on the advice of the affected special facility and in the exercise of its judgment, will either: (1) Forward a report of the outage to the Commission, supplying the information for initial reports affecting special facilities specified in this section of the Commission's Rules; (2) Forward a report of the outage to the Commission, designating the outage as one affecting “special facilities,” but reporting it at a level of detail that precludes identification of the particular facility involved; or (3) Hold the report at the NCS due to the critical nature of the application. (b) If there is to be a report to the Commission, an electronic, written, or oral report will be given by the NCS within 120 minutes of an outage to the Commission's Duty Officer, on duty 24 hours a day in the FCC's Communications and Crisis Management Center in Washington, DC. Notification may be served at such other facility designated by the Commission by public notice or (at the time of the emergency) by public announcement only if there is a telephone outage or similar emergency in Washington, DC. If the report is oral, it is to be followed by an electronic or written report not later than the next business day. Those providers whose service failures are in any way responsible for the outage must consult and cooperate in good faith with NCS upon its request for information. (c) Additionally, if there is to be a report to the Commission, the communications provider will provide a written report to the NCS, supplying the information for final reports for special facilities required by this section of the Commission's rules. The communications provider's final report to the NCS will be filed within 28 days after the outage, allowing the NCS to then file the report with the Commission within 30 days after the outage. If the outage is reportable as described in paragraph (b) of this section, and the NCS determines that the final report can be presented to the Commission without jeopardizing matters of national security or emergency preparedness, the NCS will forward the report as provided in either paragraphs (a)(1) or (a)(2) of this section to the Commission.
Title 47: Telecommunication
PART 4—DISRUPTIONS TO COMMUNICATIONS
Section Contents
General
§ 4.1 Scope, basis and purpose.
§ 4.2 Availability of reports filed under this part.
Reporting Requirements for Disruptions to Communications
§ 4.3 Communications providers covered by the requirements of this part.
§ 4.5 Definitions of outage, special offices and facilities, and 911 special facilities.
§ 4.7 Definitions of metrics used to determine the general outage-reporting threshold criteria.
§ 4.9 Outage reporting requirements—threshold criteria.
§ 4.11 Notification and initial and final communications outage reports that must be filed by communications providers.
§ 4.13 Reports by the National Communications System (NCS) and by special offices and facilities, and related responsibilities of communications providers.
General
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§ 4.1 Scope, basis and purpose.
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§ 4.2 Availability of reports filed under this part.
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Reporting Requirements for Disruptions to Communications
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§ 4.3 Communications providers covered by the requirements of this part.
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§ 4.5 Definitions of outage, special offices and facilities, and 911 special facilities.
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§ 4.7 Definitions of metrics used to determine the general outage-reporting threshold criteria.
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§ 4.9 Outage reporting requirements—threshold criteria.
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§ 4.11 Notification and initial and final communications outage reports that must be filed by communications providers.
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§ 4.13 Reports by the National Communications System (NCS) and by special offices and facilities, and related responsibilities of communications providers.
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