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The purpose of restoration priority assignments is to guide a service vendor on the sequence for restoring NS/EP services in the event of an outage or failure of multiple services. Vendors must restore all TSP services, regardless of their restoration priority levels, before any non-TSP services. This section delineates service vendors' restoration responsibilities; highlights the method by which service vendors will receive restoration priority assignments; and presents guidelines for service vendors to follow to provide priority restoration of TSP services. Service Vendors' TSP Service Restoration Responsibilities After receiving a TSP Authorization Code for its service, the service user or its contracting activity will transmit the code to the prime service vendor on a service order. The TSP Program Office does not give the TSP Authorization Code directly to the prime service vendor. This transfer is part of the normal contractual process that takes place between the service user or its contracting activity and the prime service vendor. Prime service vendors may not accept initial TSP assignments, or subsequent orders involving TSP services, without the TSP Authorization Code. Service vendors must restore TSP services with restoration priority assignments before telecommunications services without restoration priority assignments. However, control services and orderwires that a service wholly owns and operates and are crucial to the operation of that service vendor's network are exempt from this requirement. A service vendor who accepts TSP service orders must provide 24-hour points of contact (POC) to receive reports of TSP service outages from service users. This need not be a single dedicated POC for TSP service outages and may, in fact, be the contact who would receive reports of normal service outages. When service vendors recognize that a TSP service is out of service, unusable, or they receive a trouble report, they will allocate available resources to restore the service as quickly as practicable. Service vendors will dispatch personnel outside normal business hours if necessary to restore TSP services assigned a restoration priority of 1, 2, or 3. Service vendors must dispatch personnel outside normal business hours to restore TSP services assigned 4 or 5 only when the next business day is more than 24 hours away. Relationships Between Service Vendors Prime service vendors who subcontract portions of TSP services must convey the TSP assignment to subcontractors and interconnecting carriers. Subcontractors will accept and honor the TSP assignment supplied by the prime service vendor. (Service vendors should refer to internal procedures and industry guidelines regarding transfer of TSP service information between prime service vendors and their subcontractors and interconnecting carriers.) Service vendors will cooperate with other service vendors involved in restoring a TSP service by honoring requests for restoration assistance. Additionally, all service vendors, specifically including resale carriers, will ensure that they give service vendors supplying the underlying facilities the information necessary to implement priority treatment of facilities that support TSP services. If there is a discrepancy between the records of the prime service vendor and the subcontractor, the subcontractor will accept the restoration priority supplied by the prime service vendor while restoring the service. The prime service vendor is responsible for verifying the restoration priority assigned by the TSP Program Office and ensuring that both the prime service vendor and its subcontractor(s) correctly record the information. Order of Restoration Vendors will restore TSP services in order of restoration priority level: that is, TSP services assigned a restoration priority of 1 will be restored first; then TSP services assigned a restoration priority of 2 will be restored, etc. Service vendors will restore TSP services assigned the same restoration priority based on the service vendor's determination of which service can be restored first. In lieu of a clear distinction, the service vendor will use its best judgment to determine the restoration order. The service vendor should not normally interrupt TSP service restoration work in progress to restore another TSP service assigned the same priority level. The service vendor may allocate its resources in a manner that, in its best judgment, will most efficiently facilitate restoration of TSP services as soon as possible. If the service vendor and service user or their contracting activity cannot resolve to their mutual satisfaction conflict regarding the restoration priority of TSP services should refer the case to the TSP Program Office. However, the service vendor and service user or their contracting activity should first attempt to resolve conflicts among themselves. The service vendor should also refer to its internal escalation procedures and industry guidelines. In addition, service vendors may provide priority restoration to multiple service facilities (e.g., DS1 or DS3 facilities) that contain TSP services, even though services assigned no priority or lower priority may be restored along with or sometimes ahead of some higher priority-level services. Alternatively, the service vendor may reroute individual TSP services from a failed facility onto another facility to hasten restoration. Service vendors will consider the priority levels of the TSP services supported by a multiple service facility when determining the order of restoration. For example, a vendor should restore a multiple service facility supporting TSP services assigned restoration priorities 1 and 2 before a multiple service facility supporting TSP services assigned restoration priorities 3, 4, and 5. Service vendors will use their best judgment to determine the restoration order of multiple service facilities that support a number of TSP services with a variety of restoration priority assignments. As a matter of general practice, service vendors should restore existing TSP services before provisioning new TSP services. In resolving conflicts, the TSP Program requires that restoration or provisioning of TSP services follow this sequence:
Preemption to Restore TSP Services The TSP Program's rules authorize service vendors to preempt existing services to restore TSP services when, in their best judgment, preemption is necessary. It is not necessary to secure prior consent of the service user who will lose service. However, the service vendor will make its best effort to notify the user of the preempted service and state the reason for, and estimated duration of, the preemption When the service vendor determines that preemption is necessary (e.g., no spare services are available), they may preempt non-TSP services. After ensuring a sufficient number of public switched services are available for public use, based on the service vendor's best judgment, the vendor may use such services to satisfy a requirement for restoring TSP services. If no suitable spare or non-TSP services are available, the service vendor may preempt an existing TSP service to restore a TSP service with a higher priority-level assignment. When this action is necessary, the service vendor will select TSP services for preemption in the inverse order of priority assignment. Questions or comments concerning this site? Please contact the webmaster. |
