Do you suppose that fax was stipulated because they didn't trust the reliability of the "Internet" at the time that these guidelines were written? Nah, it's just that as recently as 1993/4, no one took the 'net very seriously in general. But their failure to upgrade their method of reporting since then is simply a classic case of carry-overitis.
You may recall when we once discussed regulatory lag over on the VoIP board, and the near-impossible task that the regs now have in matching technological developments in the market place with appropriate regulations in even a near- real time manner. Here is a case where their basic approach to reporting serves as a classic example of such lag at the most fundamental level.
One would think that by now such reporting features would be available through automated network health and OSS tools, in the form of event logging and alerting, keyed to pre-established criteria as outlined in the guidelines. Certainly, the carriers' own internal network operations centers (NOCs) and status centers already make use of those tools.
Heck, if dial tone availability were to suddenly exceed two ( 2) seconds in certain ILECs, the ulcer pills and tranquilizers would come out of the drawers across entire states and national regions, within the time that it takes the automated audible alarms and annunciators to sound, or the time that it would take to answer the hot lines.
Just some ramblin' thoughts based on recollections of another era, which, in telco and regulatory terms, can sometimes be representative of the present.
Even where the carriers are now doing data transfers between themselves, to the larger extent to facilitate the ordering of services and sharing of account information, they are doing so in most instances in ways which avoid the Internet entirely, for the greater part, preferring to do bulk data transfer exchanges over dedicated lines between their OSSes.
And if the carriers are not territorially contiguous to one another, it is not uncommon for them to use fax.
FAC |
