Source: https://ecfr.io/Title-47/pt47.1.4
Timestamp: 2020-03-31 13:18:06
Document Index: 242384572

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 4', 'art 4', 'art 4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§0', 'art 4', 'art 4', '§20', 'art 36', '§9', 'art 4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§4', '§12', 'art 4', '§4']

[47 CFR 4] Title 47 Part 4 : Code of Federal Regulations ';
Title 47 Part 4
Title 47 → Chapter I → Subchapter A → Part 4
§4.1 Scope, basis, and purpose.
§4.2 Availability of reports filed under this part.
§4.3 Communications providers covered by the requirements of this part.
§4.5 Definitions of outage, special offices and facilities, and 911 special facilities.
§4.9 Outage reporting requirements—threshold criteria.
§4.11 Notification and initial and final communications outage reports that must be filed by communications providers.
§4.13 [Reserved]
§4.15 Submarine cable outage reporting.
Link to an amendment published at 85 FR 15740, Mar. 19, 2020.
Source: 69 FR 70338, Dec. 3, 2004, unless otherwise noted.
Link to an amendment published at 85 FR 15733, Mar. 19, 2020.
(a) 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.
(b) The definitions, criteria, and reporting requirements set forth in Sections 4.2 through 4.13 of this part are applicable to the communications providers defined in Section 4.3 of this part.
(c) The definitions, criteria, and reporting requirements set forth in Section 4.15 of this part are applicable to submarine cable providers who have been licensed pursuant to 47 U.S.C. 34-39.
[81 FR 52362, Aug. 8, 2016]
Effective Date Note: At 81 FR 52362, Aug. 8, 2016, §4.1 was revised. This section contains information collection and recordkeeping requirements and will not become effective until approval has been given by the Office of Management and Budget.
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. See §20.3 of this chapter for the definition of Commercial Mobile Radio Service. 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) Interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers are providers of interconnected VoIP service. See §9.3 of this chapter for the definition of interconnected VoIP service. Such providers may be facilities-based or non-facilities-based. Also included are affiliated and non-affiliated entities that maintain or provide communications networks or services used by the provider in offering such communications.
(i) 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.
[69 FR 70338, Dec. 3, 2004, as amended at 77 FR 25097, Apr. 27, 2012; 83 FR 7401, Feb. 21, 2018]
(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 entities enrolled in the Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) Program at priority Levels 1 and 2, which may include, but are not limited to, major military installations, key government facilities, nuclear power plants, and those airports that are listed as current primary (PR) airports in the FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airports Systems (NPIAS) (as issued at least one calendar year prior to the outage).
(c) A critical communications outage that potentially affects an airport is defined as an outage that:
(1) Disrupts 50 percent or more of the air traffic control links or other FAA communications links to any airport;
(2) Has caused an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) or airport to lose its radar;
(3) Causes a loss of both primary and backup facilities at any ARTCC or airport;
(4) Affects an ARTCC or airport that is deemed important by the FAA as indicated by FAA inquiry to the provider's management personnel; or
(5) Has affected any ARTCC or airport and that has received any media attention of which the communications provider's reporting personnel are aware.
[69 FR 70338, Dec. 3, 2004, as amended at 81 FR 45067, July 12, 2016]
(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 667 OC3 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. (OC3 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 667 OC3-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. (OC3 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)(1) 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:
(i) Of a Mobile Switching Center (MSC);
(ii) That potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of either telephony and associated data (2nd generation or lower) service or paging service;
(iii) That affects at least 667 OC3 minutes (as defined in §4.7);
(iv) 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
(v) That 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.
(2) In determining the number of users potentially affected by a failure of a switch, a wireless provider must multiply the number of macro cell sites disabled in the outage by the average number of users served per site, which is calculated as the total number of users for the provider divided by the total number of the provider's macro cell sites.
(3) For providers of paging service only, a notification must be submitted if the failure of a switch for at least 30 minutes duration potentially affects at least 900,000 user-minutes.
(4) 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 30 days after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission.
(5) The Notification and Initial and Final reports shall comply with 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;
(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. (OC3 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; 81 FR 45068, July 12, 2016]
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 effects; 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 e-mail, FAX, or courier may be used; such Notification shall contain the information required. All hand-delivered Notifications and Initial and Final Communications Outage Reports, shall be addressed to the Federal Communications Commission, The Office of Secretary, Attention: Chief, Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau. Electronic filing shall be effectuated in accordance with procedures that are specified by the Commission by public notice. Notifications and initial reports may be withdrawn under legitimate circumstances, e.g., when the filing was made under the mistaken assumption that an outage was required to be reported.
(a) Definitions. (1) For purposes of this section, “outage” is defined as a failure or significant degradation in the performance of a licensee's cable service regardless of whether the traffic can be re-routed to an alternate path.
(2) An “outage” requires reporting under this section when there is:
(i) An outage, including those caused by planned maintenance, of a portion of submarine cable system between submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) at one end of the system and SLTE at another end of the system for more than 30 minutes; or
(ii) The loss of any fiber pair, including losses due to terminal equipment, on a cable segment for four hours or more, regardless of the number of fiber pairs that comprise the total capacity of the cable segment.
(b) Outage reporting. (1) For each outage that requires reporting under this section, the licensee (or Responsible Licensee as designated by a Consortium) shall provide the Commission with a Notification, Interim Report (subject to the limitations on planned outages in Section 4.15(b)(2)(iii)), and a Final Outage Report.
(ii) The Notification is due within 480 minutes (8 hours) of the time of determining that an event is reportable for the first three years from the effective date of these rules. After three years from the effective date of the rules, Notifications shall be due within 240 minutes (4 hours). The Notification shall be submitted in good faith. Licensees shall provide: The name of the reporting entity; the name of the cable and a list of all licensees for that cable; the date and time of onset of the outage, if known (for planned events, this is the estimated start time/date of the repair); a brief description of the event, including root cause if known; nearest cable landing station; best estimate of approximate location of the event, if known (expressed in either nautical miles and the direction from the nearest cable landing station or in latitude and longitude coordinates); best estimate of the duration of the event, if known; whether the event is planned or unplanned; and a contact name, contact email address, and contact telephone number by which the Commission's technical staff may contact the reporting entity.
(iii) The Interim Report is due within 24 hours of receiving the Plan of Work. The Interim Report shall be submitted in good faith. Licensees shall provide: The name of the reporting entity; the name of the cable; a brief description of the event, including root cause, if known; the date and time of onset of the outage; nearest cable landing station; approximate location of the event (expressed in either nautical miles and the direction from the nearest cable landing station or in latitude and longitude); best estimate of when the cable is scheduled to be repaired, including approximate arrival time and date of the repair ship, if applicable; a contact name, contact email address, and contact telephone number by which the Commission's technical staff may contact the reporting entity. The Interim report is not required where the licensee has reported in the Notification that the outage at issue is a planned outage.
(iv) The Final Outage Report is due seven (7) days after the repair is completed. The Final Outage Report shall be submitted in food faith. Licensees shall provide: The name of the reporting entity; the name of the cable; whether the outage was planned or unplanned; the date and time of onset of the outage (for planned events, this is the start date and time of the repair); a brief description of the event, including the root cause if known; nearest cable landing station; approximate location of the event (expressed either expressed in either nautical miles and the direction from the nearest cable landing station or in latitude and longitude coordinates); duration of the event, as defined in paragraph (a)(2) of this section; the restoration method; and a contact name, contact email address, and contact telephone number by which the Commission's technical staff may contact the reporting entity. If any required information is unknown at the time of submission of the Final Report but later becomes known, licensees should amend their report to reflect this knowledge. The Final Report must also contain an attestation as described in paragraph (b)(2)(i) of this section.
(v) The Notification, Interim Report, and Final 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 to the Chief, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is permitted; such Notification shall contain the information required. Electronic filing shall be effectuated in accordance with procedures that are specified by the Commission by public notice.
(c) Confidentiality. 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).
[81 FR 52363, Aug. 8, 2016]
Effective Date Note: At 81 FR 52363, Aug. 8, 2016, §4.15 was added. This section contains information collection and recordkeeping requirements and will not become effective until approval has been given by the Office of Management and Budget.