From what I have seen, I'm not sure these figures are accurate. Beyond the qualifications that you offered, another factor is the size of the network (i.e. if one carrier has three times the fiber miles and customers of another carrier but has the same number of outages, the "one is just the same as the other" argument might be a little tenuous.) I will check for a direct source, if I can find it, for NANOG list subscribers to access this information independent of any carrier or ISP. Because of a holiday and business travel, I won't get back on this immediately, but I'll try to follow this up in the next two weeks. Bill Goldstein Senior Internet Specialist AT&T wgoldstein@att.com TEL:(412)642-7288

---------- From: SEAN Sent: Friday, September 18, 1998 4:06 PM To: nanog Cc: SEAN Subject: FCC outage reports Goldstein_William@bns.ATt.COM writes:

There IS a difference. The FCC keeps records of outages which must be reported by the carriers.

It is worth checking these out.

I think there are some problems with how the FCC outage reports count things, but here goes.... FCC outage reports by year and inter-exchange carrier 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 AT&T 3 15 7 18 17 MCI 13 12 19 9 15 Sprint 3 11 3 12 9 WorldCom NA NA NA 7 13 There are all sorts of normalization problems, different reporting requirements (e.g. if you serve airports you have to report more outages), some carriers report only when the must, other carriers report anything even close to being reportable, and so on. Also, if you know how fiber swapping works, sometimes its luck of the draw who gets tapped when a shared right-of-way gets chopped. For overall trend analysis the FCC outage reports serve a useful purpose. But comparing one carrier to another is a different matter and I'd rather they not get turned into another Boardwatch fiasco with people manipulating their numbers. Note: I haven't gone to FCC reading room in Washington DC and counted the actual reports myself, these numbers are third-hand from one of the carriers salespeople. Caveat Emptor. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation <<File: FCC outage reports.TXT>>