scope:

The scope of the effort was to analyze network outages reported to the FCC under Part 4, specifically the 1,350 DS3 reporting threshold that impacted 1,000 or more DS3s as was presented by the FCC during the NRSC's December 7, 2011, quarterly meeting. The initial data set collection consisted of the following criteria:

• Data range January 2010 through November 30, 2011;

• If possible, member companies were asked to provide a complete data set of all 1,350 DS3 events regardless of the number of DS3s impacted; or

• Where complete data sets were not available, a subset of outages where:

o Reason Reportable was 1,350 DS3s Minutes; and

o DS3s reported equaled 1,000 or more.

This data set was provided to the trusted third party entity under Non-Disclosure Agreement for analysis. This scope was adjusted later to include a month by month extension of the data range of January 2010 through July 2012 to continue investigation of ongoing trends in reporting related to the large DS3 events.