ATIS
1200 G Street, NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20010
www.atis.org

For Immediate Release: January 15, 2013

Contact: Marcella Wolfe
Manager, Public Relations &
Marketing Communications
Phone: (202) 434-8851
Email: mwolfe@atis.org

ATIS Recommends Providing More Accurate Picture
of Outages’ Customer Impact

ATIS has recently issued Network Reliability Steering Committee (NRSC) Bulletin No. 2012-001, Wireless Outages, December 2012, which summarizes the findings and recommendations of its investigation into wireless outages reported by the telecommunications industry. During its analysis, the ATIS NRSC Wireless Outage Study Subteam observed a significant downward trend in the number of outage reports beginning in November 2011. It also determined, however, that the duration of outages appears to be increasing.

The Subteam found that 65 percent of the outage reports were “sympathy” reports (e.g., outages reported by one or more companies that occurred as the result of problems in another company’s network) and that the leading cause of those outages was cable damage.

The Subteam also completed a thorough analysis of keywords mentioned in the non-sympathy reports for both direct and root causes of the outages. This analysis identified the causal label Procedural-Service Provider-Other as the number one reason cited for outages across the industry. Further analysis of the keywords contained in the reports of these procedural outage events showed that 88 percent of them contained the words “planned” or “maintenance,” indicating that the outages likely occurred during a maintenance window.

In response to these findings, the ATIS NRSC Wireless Subteam notes that as new technology is deployed and consumer demand continues to increase, more planned outages associated with equipment upgrades also may occur. Communication providers select the maintenance window based on the measured traffic handled by the specific location in order to minimize subscriber impact. Therefore, in its bulletin ATIS recommends that the FCC consider revising its rules (47 C.F.R. Part 4) on outage reporting requirements associated with planned activity during designated maintenance windows to provide a more accurate depiction of an outage’s actual customer impact. ATIS NRSC Bulletin No. 2012-001 also identifies specific best practices to help ensure that outage durations are kept to a minimum.

About ATIS
As a leading technology and solutions development organization, ATIS brings together the top global ICT companies to advance the industry’s most-pressing business priorities. Through ATIS committees and forums, nearly 200 companies address cloud services, device solutions, emergency services, M2M communications, cyber security, ehealth, network evolution, quality of service, billing support, operations, and more. These priorities follow a fast-track development lifecycle — from design and innovation through solutions that include standards, specifications, requirements, business use cases, software toolkits, and interoperability testing.

ATIS is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). ATIS is the North American Organizational Partner for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a founding Partner of oneM2M, a member and major U.S. contributor to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radio and Telecommunications sectors, and a member of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL). For more information, visit www.atis.org.