Pursuant to a tentative agenda for an Open Meeting scheduled for May 12, 2011, the FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) that seeks comment on a proposal to extend the network outage reporting requirements in Part 4 of the FCC rules to Interconnected VoIP and broadband service providers. The proposal to extend network outage reporting requirements to VoIP and broadband providers was included in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which noted that the lack of broadband and VoIP network outage information limits the Commission’s understanding of broadband network operations and how to prevent future outages.
Currently the part 4 outage reporting requirements apply to wireline and wireless telecommunications service providers, cable service providers that provide circuit-switched telephony, and satellite operators. The reporting requirements generally require providers to submit an electronic notification to the FCC within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced a power outage of at least 30 minutes in duration.
Clients with questions regarding this advisory should contact the attorney assigned to their account.
