§  4.5   Definitions of outage, special offices and facilities, and 911
special facilities.

   (a) Outage is defined as a significant degradation in the ability of an
   end user to establish and maintain a channel of communications as a
   result of failure or degradation in the performance of a communications
   provider's network.

   (b) Special offices and facilities are defined as major military
   installations, key government facilities, nuclear power plants, and
   those airports that are listed as current primary (PR), commercial
   service (CM), and reliever (RL) airports in the FAA's National Plan of
   Integrated Airports Systems (NPIAS) (as issued at least one calendar
   year prior to the outage). The member agencies of the National
   Communications System (NCS) will determine which of their locations are
   “major military installations” and “key government facilities.” 911
   special facilities are addressed separately in paragraph (e) of this
   section.

   (c) All outages that potentially affect communications for at least 30
   minutes with any airport that qualifies as a “special office and
   facility” pursuant to the preceding paragraph shall be reported in
   accordance with the provisions of § §  4.11 and 4.13.

   (d) A mission-affecting outage is defined as an outage that is deemed
   critical to national security/emergency preparedness (NS/EP) operations
   of the affected facility by the National Communications System member
   agency operating the affected facility.

   (e) An outage that potentially affects a 911 special facility occurs
   whenever:

   (1) There is a loss of communications to PSAP(s) potentially affecting
   at least 900,000 user-minutes and: The failure is neither at the
   PSAP(s) nor on the premises of the PSAP(s); no reroute for all end
   users was available; and the outage lasts 30 minutes or more; or

   (2) There is a loss of 911 call processing capabilities in one or more
   E-911 tandems/selective routers for at least 30 minutes duration; or

   (3) One or more end-office or MSC switches or host/remote clusters is
   isolated from 911 service for at least 30 minutes and potentially
   affects at least 900,000 user-minutes; or

   (4) There is a loss of ANI/ALI (associated name and location
   information) and/or a failure of location determination equipment,
   including Phase II equipment, for at least 30 minutes and potentially
   affecting at least 900,000 user-minutes (provided that the ANI/ALI or
   location determination equipment was then currently deployed and in
   use, and the failure is neither at the PSAP(s) or on the premises of
   the PSAP(s)).

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