ATIS objects to FCC extensions of VoIP rules

The Federal Communications Commission’s proposed extension of rules regarding outage reporting to VoIP and ISPs providers has met with opposition from The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, according to a TMCnet blog post written by contributing editor Mini Swamy.

“As the pre-eminent industry subject matter experts on communications network reliability and outage reporting, the NRSC has made an in-depth consideration of the Commission’s extension of Part 4 of the outage reporting rules,” said Susan Miller, President and CEO, ATIS, according to the blog post.

Submitting its comments on behalf of its Network Reliability Steering Committee (NRSC), ATIS stated that the proposed expansion of the Commission’s outage reporting rules was not warranted and any imposition of reporting obligation on VoIP providers and ISPs must be reasonable, TMCnet said.

ATIS also recommended that there should be no different reporting rules for interconnected VoIP service providers. For broadband ISPs, ATIS advocated that the reporting rules should be in line with the reporting principles that had been previously proposed, according to the blog post.

Requesting the FCC to modify its outage reporting criteria, ATIS recommended that the FCC should require the submission of outage reports only if the time duration exceeded 120 minutes, resulting in complete loss of service impacting a minimum of 100,000 customers, TMCnet reported.

Miller disagreed with mandatory reporting and suggested that any new obligations needed to be voluntary and collaborative as such efforts would foster cooperation, promote innovation and provide the flexibility required to meet evolving challenges, according to TMCnet.

ATIS is the planning and standards development organization for global, market-driven standards for the information, entertainment and communications industry.