scope:

General

In an effort to insure that all possible providers, users and customers of access services or local trunking services are addressed in all issues and documentation maintained by or on behalf of the Ordering & Billing Forum, two terms describing these providers, users and customers will be used:

• Customer

• Provider

Throughout this document, the term customer describes the entity ordering services (e.g., an interexchange carrier or end user. The term provider describes the entity providing the service (e.g., an exchange carrier). This overview describes the various ordering forms used for the purpose of requesting service to be provided by the providers. These instructions are equally applicable to manual (paper) and mechanized (electronic) forms of ordering by the customer when placing an order for service under the various provider tariffs/contracts/negotiations.

Many fields within the ASOG are applied on the same basis in both Canada and the United States.

In Canada, the geographical equivalent of a state is known as a province. In cases where there is a geographic reference, "state/province" will be indicated in the field definition where applicable.

The concept of LATA does not exist in Canada. Canadian providers are regulated at the federal level. For fields where a reference is made to state in association with regulatory issues or LATA, there will be no reference to "province" in the definition.

This guideline is reissued to reflect changes necessary to clarify the Access Service Request (ASR) ordering process as recommended by provider representatives and customer representatives in the Ordering and Billing Forum committees. Requests for changes, additions, deletions or other such enhancements are to be forwarded in accordance with the procedures in the Ordering and Billing Forum.

The ASR does not convey licensing right to non-COMMON LANGUAGE®1 licensees to use the COMMON LANGUAGE code sets identified throughout the ASR in their internal operations. Where COMMON LANGUAGE is provided, its intended use by non-COMMON LANGUAGE licensees is limited. Allowable uses will be specified by the COMMON LANGUAGE licensee per their COMMON LANGUAGE contract