Although it will be a few months before I can get my hands on recent
FCC outage reports, even though they are supposedly "public" I always
seem to run into difficulty obtaining copies, I'll use this message
as a jumping off point.
I have noticed that different 'fiber cuts' (or other transmission
facility problems) seem to get different kinds of reactions. Some
carriers' fiber cuts seem to pass unnoticed. While other carriers'
cable cuts make the front pages of newspapers across the country.
Further it is not clear to me if the current FCC reporting methods are
really capturing the relevant data. Whether a fiber cut is a "reportable"
event depends a lot on what type of customers had communication circuits
on the fiber. If AOL had a fiber cut and was down for a week, it would
not be a reportable event. Irregardless of whether all the newspapers
report on it. Because AOL is considered one 'customer' as far as the
reporting requirements.
Even 635 DS3s being cut may not be a reportable event if most of the
fiber is being used by only a a few hundred Internet providers (no matter
how many end-users are effected). On the other hand, if the fiber was
being used mostly for DS-0 switched voice circuits, it would be a
likely be a reportable event because of the definition of blocked
calls and circuits.
Should ISPs start collecting and pooling data on the performance of
various facility carriers because the data being collecting by the
traditional facility carrier organizations such as ATIS and FCC Network
Reliability Council doesn't seem to reflect the information required or
received by ISPs?