Frame Relay Services

 

I.3.2           Global Frame Relay Service Level Guarantee (SLG):

 

Global Frame Relay Service Level Guarantees (SLG) provide financial credits to customers in cases where the Company network fails to meet performance commitments. Unless otherwise specified, the Global Frame Relay SLG applies to Frame Relay Service located or originating in the U.S. Mainland, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam ordered by Customers on or after November 1, 2001 and prior to October 1, 2002, who: (i) commit to a service term of at least one year, and (ii) install service in at least five locations with their initial service order. 

 

The Global Frame Relay SLG also applies to customers who ordered services covering transport either within or originating in the U.S. prior to November 1, 2001 if their active contract references the Company tariff.

 

 Definitions of Terms

Terms used in this document are defined at the point of use and/or in the Terms and Definitions table at the end of the SLG document.

 

Coverage Categories:

The Company Service Level Guarantee commitments vary by access type, geographic location and outage type. These are defined as follows:

 

1.         Access Types

Type 1 Access:  

Circuits for which local access is furnished wholly via MCI Legacy Company facilities or which are collocated with MCI Legacy Company facilities.

 

Type 2 Access:

Circuits for which local access is furnished in part via MCI Legacy Company facilities.

 

Type 3 Access:

Circuits for which local access is not furnished via MCI Legacy Company facilities, but which are ordered and billed on Customer’s behalf by Company.  Economy Frame Relay circuits are considered Type 3 Access. 

 

2.         Geographic Location

The countries covered under the Global Frame Relay SLG are divided into four categories. The categories are as follows:

1.         US

Includes the U.S. Mainland and Hawaii. The state of Alaska is covered through a Frame Relay Extension agreement and excluded from the Global Frame Relay SLG.

2.         US Domestic

Restricted to the U.S. Mainland.

3.         Global Tier A

Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom

4.         Global Tier B

All of the Company On Net countries that are not covered in the US, US Domestic and Global Tier A categories.

 

Exclusions:

Hawaii and Puerto Rico are excluded from a sub-set of Service Level Guarantees.  Economy Frame Relay Service is also excluded from a sub-set of Service Level Guarantees. These are detailed in the Inclusions and Exclusions section of this document.

 

3.         Outage Types

a.         Hard Outage

A Hard Outage is defined as a service disruption or degradation that prohibits use of the service. The service level guarantees for End to End Network Availability and Mean Time to Repair apply to Hard Outages.

 

b.         Soft Outage

A Soft Outage is defined as a degradation of service where the customer can still use the service. The service level guarantee for Network Transit Delay is in the Soft Outage category.

 

Service Level Guarantees Defined:

There are two types of SLGs: Standard and Enhanced. The Standard SLGs are offered as a standard part of the frame relay product without charge. The Enhanced SLGs have to be purchased by the customer and have separate fees.

 

I.          The Standard SLGs Defined:

1.                  End to End Network Availability

 

Definition

End-to-End Network Availability is defined as the total number of minutes in a billing month during which a specific PVC route and local access are available to exchange data between the two Customer end points, divided by the total number of minutes in a billing month. The measure is calculated as the percentage of total time that the PVC is available within a month. The credit payment is determined by the minutes of down time.

 

Offering

SLG for U.S. and Global Tier Categories

Parameter	Access Type	U.S.	Global Tier A	Global Tier B	Economy FR
End-to-End Network Availability	Type 1	100%	100%	100%	NA
End-to-End Network Availability	Type 2 or 3	99.8%	99.8%	99.8%	99.7%

 

Calculation

End to End Network Availability is the percentage of time that the PVC is available within a given calendar month. End to End Network availability only applies to Hard Outages.

 

Monthly End-to-End Network Availability (%) =

 

 

 

Credit Structure:

The credit is based on the number of minutes of down time. Sites with Type 1 access qualify for service credits at anything above zero minutes of down time within a calendar month. Sites with Type 2 and 3 access qualify for credits at 87 minutes of down time in a calendar month. The Company is within the 99.8% Network Availability commitment at up to 86 minutes of downtime for a 30-day month. Economy Frame Relay sites qualify for credits at 130 minutes of down time in a calendar month.  The Company is within the 99.7% Network Availability commitment at up to 129 minute of downtime for a 30 day month. 

 

2.         Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

 

Definition

Mean Time To Repair is defined as the average time to restore service during a Network Outage. Mean Time to Repair only applies to Hard Outages.

 

Offering

Parameter	Access Type	U.S.	Global Tier A	Global Tier B	Economy FR
End-to-End Network MTTR	Type 1	2 Hours	4 Hours	4 Hours	NA
End-to-End Network MTTR	Type 2 or 3	4 Hours	5 Hours	8 Hours	6 Hours

 

Calculation

MTTR is a monthly average of the time taken to repair all Trouble Tickets on a specific service during a Network Outage. The length of each Network Outage on a specific service is totaled at the end of each billing month and divided by the corresponding number of Network Outages for that service. This is calculated from Trouble Tickets opened during that billing month.  MTTR per billing month is calculated for the service as follows:

 

Monthly Mean Time To Repair (Hrs.) =

 

             Cumulative length of Network Outage(s) per service                

Total number of Trouble Tickets per billing month per service

 

Credit Structure

The credit calculation is based on the average repair times for all network outages within a calendar month. Credits for Type 1 access sites start when the average MTTR equals 2 hours. Credits for Type 2 & 3 access sites start when the average MTTR reaches four hours.  Credits for Economy Frame Relay sites start with the average MTTR reaches six hours.

 

3.         Network Transit Delay (NTD)

 

Definition

Network Transit Delay is defined as the round trip delay between the origination and destination infrastructure ports. It is the period of time that elapses between (i) the transmission of the “ping” packet from the origination infrastructure port and (ii) the receipt of the “ping” packet by the destination infrastructure port, in both directions of a PVC. The Company NTD SLG matrix does not include the access loop in the calculations.

 

Offering

For frame packet sizes less than or equal to 200 bytes, including protocol overhead, The Company's SLG for the NTD is 120 milliseconds or less for the Domestic U.S. Frame Relay network. Sites outside of the U.S. Mainland are covered with specific country to country round trip transit delay measures. The NTD measures for transport between U.S. and Non U.S. locations are posted in the Network Transit Delay Matrix of this document.

 

External factors that may cause delay, such as access serialization delay and access link congestion are excluded from the measurement.

 

Customers are expected to open Trouble Tickets when the NTD issue first surfaces. The Company will work with the customer to confirm the network transit times, repair problems and insure the customer's applications are functioning. The NTD SLG gives the Company thirty (30) calendar days to repair the NTD issue prior to the customer qualifying for credits.

 

Calculation

 

The Company's network ping test calculate NTD by summing the elapsed time in milliseconds measured as a round trip from the origination and destination infrastructure ports in each direction of the PVC.

 

Customers can complete ping test prior to opening a trouble ticket. The Company may opt to use the customer's ping test as a benchmark for the repair actions.

 

The formal NTD calculation is:

 

NTD = (Point A to Point B NTD = t₂ – t₁) + (Point B to Point A NTD = t₂ – t₁)

 

Where:

                                    Point A is the Company origination infrastructure port

Point B is the Company destination infrastructure port

t₁ is the time in milliseconds when a frame leaves the Ingress Reference Point (i.e., frame exit event)

t₂ is the time in milliseconds when a frame arrives at the Egress Queue Output Reference Point  (i.e., frame entry event.)

 

Credit Structure

The Company will confirm that specific PVC does or does not comply with the NTD expectation. In cases of non-compliance, the Company has thirty (30) calendar days to address the non-compliance and close the applicable Trouble Ticket without penalty. If the PVC continues to not meet this SLG after the 30-day period, the Customer may qualify for credits.

 

Enhanced Service Level Guarantees Defined

 

1.         U.S. Domestic Service Installation Guarantee

 

Definition

Service Installation is the period of time between the date the Company accepts a complete installation order from the Customer for a new frame relay service located within the U.S. Mainland and the date the Company completes the installation of the service. A complete installation is defined as the point in the implementation where the customer can use the service. To qualify for the guarantee, the access circuit and port must be ordered by the Company and be physically located within the U.S. Mainland with a speed less than or equal to a DS1/T1 (1.536Mbps). The originating and terminating ports must be within the U.S. Mainland. The Customer must pay the installation charges for the access circuit, port and PVC. Utilization of promotional offerings on installation charges will disqualify the Customer from this SLG.

 

Offering

The SLG for Service Installation is forty-five days for new frame relay services with access circuits of less than or equal to T1/DS1 bandwidth.

 

Calculation

The SLG is calculated from the date the Company accepts the Customer’s order as complete for new frame relay service through the date on which the service has been installed and is ready for Customer’s use.

 

Credit Structure

The customer will receive a three hundred percent (300%) refund of their installation fees if the Company fails to install a circuit within 45 business days. Delays in installation related to customer actions, moves or scheduling difficulties are excluded from the installation interval calculation.

 

2.         Frame Gold Enhanced Proactive Notification (EPN)

 

Definition

Frame Gold Enhanced Proactive Notification (EPN) is a Company service that provides the Customer with notification of a circuit outage. For the EPN SLG, the circuit outage will be defined as the lack of visibility to the circuit Link Management Indicator (LMI). After ten (10) consecutive minutes of circuit LMI loss, the Company Operations Service and Support Proactive Notification (OSS-PN) Group will receive an alarm and will begin to attempt to resolve the outage and will notify the Customer within thirty (30) minutes of the alarm report.

 

Offering

The Customer must subscribe to the Frame Relay Gold Service in order to receive the EPN SLG. Customers can sign-up by submitting a signed enrollment form for each circuit to be covered by the EPN SLG. EPN will only be provided on circuits enrolled in the Frame Relay Gold Service. This EPN SLG applies to DS0 and T1/DS1 circuits in the U.S. Mainland.

 

e                                              Access circuits enrolled in the Frame Relay Gold Service will be closely monitored for loss of LMI. Once circuit LMI has been lost for ten (10) consecutive minutes, an alarm will notify the Company OSS-PN group to attempt to resolve the issue and notify the Customer. Following the alarm, the OSS-PN group will have thirty (30) minutes to notify the Customer that their circuit is experiencing a Circuit outage (“Notification Period”).

 

The Company will not be obligated to pay non-compliance credits when the OSS-PN group is unable to reach the Customer point of contact.

 

Calculation

The Notification Period begins after the ten (10) consecutive minute LMI loss alarm is reported. The Company has thirty (30) minutes to notify the customer from the start point of the Notification Period. The Company OSS-PN group will notify the Customer point of contact as indicated on the Enhanced Proactive Notification enrollment form.

 

Should the Customer contact the OSS-PN group within the Notification Period and before the OSS-PN group has initiated a call to the Customer, the Company will be deemed in compliance with the EPN SLG.

 

Credit Structure

The customer will receive a credit equal to three hundred percent (300%) of the monthly recurring (MRR) Frame Gold Service charge on the applicable access circuit. There is a limit of one credit per circuit in non-compliance per month.

 

Qualifications:

Credit Application Structure

The SLG credits are taken against the monthly recurring charges (MRR) for the port and/or PVC(s). The credits can be applied against PVC and/or Port charges as dictated by the outage type, either Hard or Soft. The credits are not cumulative month to month meaning the same schedule applies for each consecutive month should the outage exceed 30 days. The total credits within any one-month for the Standard SLGs is limited to a maximum of 40% of the MRR for Port and PVC(s).  The Enhanced SLGs have unique credit maximums.

 

Customers are required to open a Trouble Ticket with the Company Customer Service Center at the time the service difficulty develops in order for the outage to qualify for an SLG credit. The Company, in its sole discretion, shall determine whether it complied with any and all SLGs and whether or not a credit is due to the customer. The Company commits to crediting the customer's account within 90 days following confirmation of non-compliance with the SLG.

 

Trouble Ticket and Credit Request by Service Level Guarantee

a.         End To End Network Availability

Customer opens a Trouble Ticket within 72 hours of the outage.

Customer submits SLG credit request to the Company account team in writing within 15 days of opening the Trouble Ticket.

The written request must contain the following information:

-  The date the outage occurred.

-  The time the outage began and ended.

-  The Circuit ID(s) for each circuit(s) that was impacted.

 

b.         Mean Time to Repair

Customer opens Trouble Ticket within 72 hours of the outage.

Customer submits SLG credit request to the Company account team in writing within 15 days of opening the Trouble Ticket.

The written request must contain the following information:

-  The date the outage occurred.

-  The time the outage began and ended.

-  The Circuit ID(s) for each circuit(s) that was impacted.

 

c.         Network Transit Delay

Customer opens Trouble Ticket within 72 hours of the time the NTD issue impacts the customer

Customer submits the SLG credit request to the Company account team in writing within 15 days of the end of the repair period.

The written request must contain the following information:

-  The date the outage occurred.

-  The time the outage began and ended.

-  The Circuit ID(s) for each circuit(s) that was impacted.

 

d.         US Domestic Service Installation

Customer must report the delay in service installation to the appropriate customer service center when the target date is missed.

Customer then needs to make a request in writing (e-mail or fax) for a credit from the Company account team within fifteen (15) days of the date that the Company completes the installation of the circuit. 

The customer must document the following information when requesting the credit:

-        The circuit identifier

-        The date the circuit should have been installed

-        The date the circuit was installed

-        The date that the service installation period began

-        The date specified for installation by the customer

-        The customer contact information. 

 

e.         Frame Gold Enhanced Proactive Notification (EPN)

The customer must request the service level guarantee credit in writing from the Company account team within 15 days of the service outage.

The written documentation must contain the following:

-     The date the circuit outage occurred

-     The time the circuit outage began and ended

-     The circuit ID(s) for each circuit(s) that did not receive notification within the EPN SLG time frame.

 

Credits

A.         Credit Tables by Outage Type

The credits vary by location, access type and length of outage.

 

1.         Hard Outage Tables

 

Network Availability		Credit as a % of MRR
Network Down Time		U.S, Global Tier A& B	U.S., Global Tier A	Global Tier B
From  Minutes	To Minutes	Type 1	Type 2 or 3	Type 2 or 3
0	86	10%	0%	0%
87	120	15%	10%	5%
121	240	20%	10%	5%
241	360	25%	15%	10%
361	640	30%	20%	10%
641	720	30%	20%	10%
> 720		30%	20%	10%

 

Mean Time to Repair		Credit as a % of MRR
Network Outage to Repair Time		U.S, Global Tier A& B	U.S.,            Global Tier A	Global Tier B
From                   Hour:Min: Sec	To             Hour:Min:Sec	Type 1	Type 2 or 3	Type 2 or 3
2:00:00	3:59:59	4%	0%	0%
4:00:00	4:59:59	4%	0%	0%
5:00:00	7:59:59	10%	4%	0%
8:00:00	11:59:59	10%	4%	4%
12 Plus		10%	4%	4%

 

 

2.         Soft Outage Table

Soft Outage
For violations of:	Credit as a % of MRR
Latencia	20%

 

Determining the PVC Metric by Access Type

The combination of the origination and termination point of the PVC determines the access type category. PVCs that originate from a Type 1 facility and terminate on either a Type 2 or Type 3 facility are classified as Type 2 or 3 access and qualify for the associated Type 2 or 3 SLG metrics. 

 

Inclusions and Exclusions

 

I.          Inclusions

The Global Frame Relay SLG covers the following Company Frame Relay services:

a.         Domestic Frame Relay for all standard speeds.

b.         Domestic Metro Frame Relay

c.         International Frame Relay defined as frame relay services that originate in the U.S. and terminate outside of the U.S.

 

The Global Frame Relay SLG includes the following products and regions:

a.         Frame relay services with origination and termination within the U.S. Mainland and Hawaii.

b.         Frame relay transport that originates within the U.S. Mainland and Hawaii and terminates outside of the U.S.

c.         Access Types 1, 2 and 3 for Frame Relay.

d.         Frame relay transport performance for Frame Relay Managed Services customers.

 

II.          Exclusions

1.         Product and Region Exclusions

a.         FRASI: Frame Relay to ATM Interworking between or within On Net countries is excluded. 

b.         Frame Relay Extension (FRE): Frame Relay sites supported through network to network interface partnerships are excluded. The SLG and best effort measures for the FRE sites are covered under a separate document.

c.         Managed Services for Frame Relay and/or ATM are excluded from this document but captured in the Managed Services SLG.        

d.         ISDN access within the United States.

e.         DSL and ISDN access outside of the United States.

f.          Customer-Provided Access: Access lines purchased by the customer through a provider other than Company and billed directly to the customer are excluded from this SLG. 

g.         Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) associated with the Frame Relay service that is not part of a Managed Services contract.

 

2.         General Exclusions

The following exclusions apply to all Service Level Guarantees contained in this document:

·         Any act or omission on the part of the Customer, its contractors or vendors, or any other entity over which the Customer exercises control or has the right to exercise control;

·         Labor strikes;

·         Natural disasters;

·         Scheduled maintenance on the part of the Customer, customer contractors or customer vendors;

·         Scheduled maintenance on the part of the Company which are within the Company's maintenance windows;

·         Lapses of service associated with new installations (i.e. before new service acceptances by Customer);

·         Lapses of service that are not associated with the Company provided service;

·         Lapses of service or performance issues related to Customer Premises Equipment (CPE); or

·         Force majeure events beyond the reasonable control of the Company (including, but not limited to, acts of God, government regulation, acts of domestic and/or international terrorism, and national emergency).

 

3.         Network Availability Exclusions

Network Availability measurements do not include periods of Network Outage resulting in whole or in part from one or more of the following causes: 

·         For End-to-End Network Availability for Type 1 access circuits, any act or omission on the part of any third party including, but not limited to any local access provider;

·         For End-to-End Network Availability for Type 2 or 3 circuits, any act or omission on the part of any third party other than a local access provider; or

·         Periods of service degradation, such as slow data transmission.

 

4.         Mean Time To Repair Exclusions

The MTTR objective applies only in those cases in which the Customer informs the Company of a Network Outage (i.e., opens a Trouble Ticket) and subsequently allows necessary access to its premises and facilities for testing.  MTTR measurements do not include the following:

·         Any act or omission on the part of any third party, other than a local access provider;

·         Customer inquiry for circuit monitoring purposes only; or

·         Periods of service degradation, such as slow data transmission.

 

5.         Network Transit Delay Exclusions

·         Frames consisting of more than 200 bytes are not considered in calculating the NTD;

·         Frames originating or terminating on an Economy Frame Relay port;

·         The NTD objective is suspended during periods in which a major network component (e.g., backbone link or gateway switch) is not functioning and the network is in an emergency reroute configuration;

·         Frames to or from Puerto Rico or Hawaii;

·         Any act or omission on the part of any third party including, but not limited to, any local access provider.

 

6.         Domestic Service Installation Exclusions

Service Installation measurements do not include the following:

·         Delays resulting from changes to a previously accepted service order by Customer, its agents or vendors;

·         Any promotional offerings on any installation fees for port, PVC or access;

·         A Customer-ordered installation date that is within the Service Installation Period;

·         Unavailability of Customer’s premises, equipment, or facilities required to install the service;

·         Delays attributed to extending the access circuit demarcation point;

·         Installations outside of the U.S. Mainland;

·         Delays due to causes beyond the Company's control;

·         Delays resulting from an order suspension due to credit issues involving the customer;

·         Delays resulting from inaccurate or incorrect order information from Customer; 

·         Economy Frame Relay Ports and Economy PVCs.

 

7.         Frame Gold Enhanced Proactive Notification SLG Exclusions

The SLG for Enhanced Proactive Notification does not include the following:

·         Circuits that are not enrolled in the Frame Relay Gold Service;

·         Circuits that originate or terminate on Economy Frame Relay ports;

·         Service interruptions originating from the Customer’s premise that do not trigger loss of LMI;

·         Loss of LMI due to router failure;

·         Access circuits outside of the U.S. Mainland;

·         Service interworking circuits for Frame to IP and FRASI;

·         Periods of service degradation, such as slow data transmission;

·         Catastrophic or Major events such as fiber cuts or network switch outages that effect multiple Customers.

·          Customer point of contact unavailable to receive notification;

·         Customer point of contact information (telephone, pager etc) incorrect or not operable.

 

8.         Additional International Exclusions

The Company further excludes SLGs for International Frame Relay service based on any Network Outage resulting in whole or in part from one or more of the following causes:

·         Virtual Points of Presence (VPOPs)

·         Network to Network Interface (NNI) Partners

·         Concert Frame Relay Service

 

 Network Transit Delay Matrix for U.S. and U.S. to Non U.S. Transport:

 

Process for Determining the Round Trip Network Transit Delay:

The NTD SLGs is based on the geographic distance between existing trunk end points and a distance per mile packet measure.

 

For example, the NTD from the United States to Germany is based on the miles between a central trunk in the US and a central trunk in Germany. It is not based on the shortest distance between the U.S. and Germany. The transit delay measures in this matrix are expected to be worst case delays. External factors such as access serialization delay and access link congestion, which may cause delay, are excluded from the measurement.

 

Round Trip Network Transit Delay Matrix for U.S. to Non U.S. Locations

 

País

 

Argentina                           314

Australia                            362

Austria                               304

Belgium                             281

Brazil                                 299

Canada                             230

Chile                                  296

Colombia                           203

Czech Republic                305

Denmark                           287

France                               288

Germany                           304

Greece                              337

Hong Kong                        294

Hungary                             312

Indonesia                           340

Ireland                               271

Israel                                 358

Italy                                    284

Japan                                257

Korea, Republic of            263

Malaysia                            331

Mexico                               170

Monaco                             303

Netherlands                       273

New Zealand                     377

Peru                                  232

Philippines                         313

Puerto Rico                       202

Russia                               334

Singapore                          338                                   

Spain                                 291

Sweden                             308

Switzerland                       296

Taiwan                              352

United Kingdom                270

United States                    120

Venezuela                         203

 

Terms and Definitions Table

 

Terms and Definitions	Definition
Access Link Congestion	Congestion on the local access link, which runs between the customer's premises and the Company's POP.
Access Serialization Delay	Delays in the local tail component of the transport related to the process of changing the transmission from parallel-by-byte to serial-by-bit.
Access Type 1	Circuits for which local access is furnished wholly via MCI Legacy Company facilities or which are collocated with MCI Legacy Company facilities.
Access Type 2	Circuits for which local access is furnished in part via MCI Legacy Company facilities, but which are ordered and billed on Customer’s behalf by Company.
Access Type 3	Circuits for which local access is not furnished via Company or Company-affiliate facilities.
Business Days	Monday through Friday in normal working hours which are usually 8AM to 5PM in any time zone.
Calendar Month	The days in any month from the first day to the last day. Varies from 28 days to 31 days depending on the month.
Circuit Ids	The code (numbers and letters) used to identify the circuits in the system. These are contained on the customer's invoice along with the circuit charges.
Credit Request	Written request for a service level guarantee credit sent by the customer to the Company account team either through fax or e-mail
Customer Provided Access	Local access line that the customer arranges for with a local provider. The local provider bills the customer directly.
Customer Service Center	Service centers where customers call in to report service issues.
Egress queue	The order in which the frame packets exit the Company's network.
End to End Network Availability	The total number of minutes within a billing month during which a specific PVC route and local access are available to exchange data between two customer end points divided by the total number of minutes in a billing month.
Enhanced Proactive Notification	Part of the Frame Gold product where the Company will notify the customer of a loss of Link Management Indicator (LMI) within an established time period.
Enhanced Service Level Guarantees	Service Level Guarantees that the customer can purchase for additional service fees.
EPN	Enhanced Proactive Notification
Financial Credits	These are the monetary credits the customer receives when the Company fails to meet the service level guarantee performance commitment. The credits are deducted from the customer's invoice in dollars.
Frame Relay Extension	Frame relay services through sites where the Company partners with another regional provider. The Company does not own these geographic points of presence.
Frame Relay Gold	Network management product offered by the Company.
Global Tier A	One of the four categories of countries defined by a unique set of service commitments.
Global Tier B	One of the four categories of countries defined by a unique set of service commitments.
Hard Outage	Complete loss of service where the customer can not use the service and is prepared to release it for immediate testing.
International Frame Relay	Frame relay service sites outside of the United States.
Link Management Indicator
LMI	Link Management Indicator
Mean Time to Repair	The time required to repair the service difficulty from the point the service desk is notified until the point where the service is restored. Mean Time to Repair is measure in Hours, minutes and seconds.
Metro Frame Relay
Monthly Recurring Rate (charges)	This is the monthly charge per service component.
MRR	Monthly Recurring Rate or Monthly Recurring Charges.
Network Outage	Service disruption or degradation. Network Outages are classified as either hard or soft outages.
Network Transit Delay	The time required for a single frame packet set up as a ping text to travel round trip between an origination point to a destination point and return to the origination point.
On Net	Frame relay service on the Company geographic points of presence where Company has full ownership.
OSS-PN	Operations Service and Support Proactive Notification Group.
Operations Service and Support Proactive Notification Group	Company group responsible for notifying Frame Gold customers about outages.
Option 1 Frame Relay	Frame relay service on the U.S. Lucent_ Ascend service with or without services on the Company international network.
Option 2 Frame Relay	Frame relay service on the U.S. Bay-Lucent (Ascend) network with or without the Company international network.
Permanent Virtual Circuit(s)	A virtual circuit that provides the equivalent of a dedicated private line service over a packet switching network between two DTEs (Data Terminal Equipment) The path between the two users is fixed.
Puerto	An entrance to and/or exit from a network.
Protocol overhead	Information such as control, routing and error-checking characters, that is in addition to the user-transmitted data.
PVC(s)	Permanent Virtual Circuit(s)
Round Trip	Transit measurements across a network link that starts and the origination point, extends to a termination point and then comes back to the origination point.
Servicio	The term service refers to the access line, port and PVC components of the Frame Relay service.
Service Installation Guarantee	Service performance commitments made by the Company to the Customer which carry credits in cases where the network transport does not meet the commitment levels.
Service Installation Period	The time from when the Company accepts an order for new service as complete to the time the circuit is ready for the customer's use.
Service Level Guarantee	A series of performance commitments made by the Company to the Customer.
SLG	Service Level Guarantee
Soft Outage	A degradation of service where the customer is able to use the service and is not prepared to release the service for immediate testing.
Standard Service Level Guarantees	End to End Network Availability, Mean Time To Repair and Network Transit Delay.
Trouble Ticket	The result of reporting by a Customer to Company of either a perceived service outage or service degradation.
U.S. Domestic	U.S. Mainland
U.S. Domestic Service Installation	A service level guarantee that commits the Company to a set number of days for completing the installation of a circuit in the U.S. Mainland.