NRIC IV Network Reliability and Interoperability Council IV

1. NRIC IVNetwork Reliability and Interoperability Council IV Washington, DC July 14, 1999 Rick Harrison Telcordia Technologies 732-699-6720 rick6@telcordia.com

2. NRIC IV Focus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 Team Members

3. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 : Work Plan/Scope Focus on Power, Essential Services, Facility, and Procedural Best Practices and outage reports (Today’s report will only cover Power and Procedural) • Identify new Best Practices from NRCII, NRICIII and ongoingNRSC Activities • Update Best Practice List from last Best Practice reviewwith any new Best Practices found above • Expand and revise Best Practice titles and text to broaden the scope to make them more applicable to new entrants • Re-categorize Best Practices into more generic focus areas • Survey industry on Best Practice Implementation, Effectiveness and relative cost to implement • Review Outage reports for Best Practice implications

4. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 : Responses to Carrier Best Practices Survey GTE Yes SBC Yes Ameritech Yes Sprint Yes AT&T Yes BellSouth Yes Bell Atlantic Yes 7 Companies No Response Responses cover 84% of total US access lines

5. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 : Responses to Supplier Best Practices Survey Lucent Yes MOTOROLA Yes Nortel Yes Tellabs Yes 21 Other Companies No

6. NRIC IVFocus Group 3

7. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 : Preliminary Observations/Findings Overall implementation of Best Practices by traditional service providers and suppliers remains high • Power • No new best practices have been identified • All existing best practices have been rated as effective • Review of power outage reports (past 2 Years) supports the need for following existing best practices • Outage index (customer impact) reflects effectiveness of power best practices in mitigating outage impact

8. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 : Preliminary Observations/Findings (The Subcommittee has reviewed and evaluated the report of the NRSC Procedural Error Team and has included their recommendations, as appropriate, for new best practices) • Procedural • The volume of procedures being performed in the networks is increasing (increased opportunity for errors) • Increasing complexity and capacity of operating environment • Increased number of interconnecting networks • Expanded capabilities of new technology • Code openings due to increased utilization of numbering resources • Implementation of Number Portability • Y2K related software changes

9. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Subcommittee 1 : Preliminary Observations/Findings Continued (The Subcommittee has reviewed and evaluated the report of the NRSC Procedural Error Team and has included their recommendations, as appropriate, for new best practices) • Procedural • High Implementation • However, Implementation may mean “have a policy” • Survey responses indicate that Procedural Best Practices are highly effective however, in practice, the trend in the frequency of procedural outage reports indicate that they are not being followed • Procedural Best Practices are directed at both mitigating and preventing outages

10. NRIC IVFocus Group 3 Next Steps July - A Best Practice by Best Practice review and analysis of the survey responses -Review NRSC Facilities Solution Team Report for Best Practice implications August -Complete survey analysis and gain consensus around final recommendations September -Draft 1 of final report October -Complete final report -NRIC readout of recommendations