Perhaps the opposite of an 99.999% SLA, just how bad do things need to get before its a problem? Time after time, I've seen networks incapable of carrying 90%+ of its normal traffic, or unusable for its intended purpose. But the PR spokespeople never admit its an "outage." "Larry Plumb, Verizon spokesperson, said that as of Monday there had been no network outages in the Northeast region, just some slow throughput problems. This, despite a voice mail message at its main customer support number telling customers to remain patient until technicians resolved the problem. Repeated requests for information were ignored" http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,,8_518561,00.html Ok, so the word "outage" is verboten for PR people. The electric utility industry has the same issue with the word "blackout." Instead there are sustained service anomalies. Which lets utilities say with a straight face they've had no blackouts. Instead of an SLA, do we need a SLG (Service Level Glossary)?