Background
The Commission established performance measures to monitor and enforce ILEC OSS performance to CLEC customers. Good OSS performance is essential to establishing local exchange competition. A parity measure compares the OSS performance that Pacific provides its own customers with the performance it provides CLEC customers. If performance to CLEC customers is worse than it is to Pacific's customers, it could be difficult for the CLECs to stay competitive. The Commission's PIP measures performance, assesses those results, and requires Pacific to disburse billing credits to the CLECs and the ratepayers in the event of deficient performance.
In 1999, the Commission adopted the first set of OSS performance measures and standards by approving a joint partial settlement agreement ("JPSA") between the parties to this proceeding.1 However, the parties established a standard for the xDSL loop service-type envisioning a retail offering by Pacific that never materialized. Consequently, OSS performance for xDSL loop OSS services has not been evaluated in the PIP monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.
On May 31, 2002, Pacific filed an advice letter seeking Commission approval of an amendment to its interconnection agreement with AT&T Communications of California (AT&T). The amendment would convert the xDSL loop sub-measure standards as described, infra, and represents an agreement between Pacific and AT&T on converting these sub-measures.
Negotiations have commenced for the annual review of the performance measures, and parties have been negotiating new xDSL loop standards that could apply to all CLECs.2 For service-provisioning Performance Measure 7, the benchmark standard agreed to by Pacific and AT&T requires ninety-five percent of installations for CLEC customers to be completed within the "Standard Interval,"3 which is currently ten days for lines needing conditioning and five days for lines not needing conditioning.4 Other CLECs have preferred to have a specific number of days stated instead of "Standard Interval," such as "ninety-five percent of installations completed within five (or ten) days."
1 The Joint Partial Settlement Agreement regarding Performance Measurements ("JPSA"), was originally approved by the Commission in Decision (D.) 99-08-020 (August 5, 1999) and later modified in D.01-05-087 (May 24, 2001). 2 To begin settlement discussions, SBC Communications sent an e-mail notice to all parties pursuant to Rule 51.1 of the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure on June 20, 2002. 3 The "Standard Interval" is defined as "The interval that the ILEC quotes to its customers with respect to how long it will take to provision a service request. These intervals are standardized by specific service type and type of service modification requested ILECs publish these standard intervals in documents used by their own service representatives as well as ordering instructions provided to CLECs. POTS services do not have standard intervals; their installation intervals are based on force available and workload. They may change as frequently as twice a day." D.01-05-087, JPSA Opinion, Attachment C at 127. 4 "Conditioning" refers to preparation needed for some lines before they can carry xDSL services. The five- and ten-day intervals were established in Appendix DSL ("Appendix DSL") to D.00-09-074, adopted September 21, 2000 in proceeding R.93-04-003/I.93-04-002, Rulemaking on the Commission's Own Motion to Govern Open Access to Bottleneck Services and Establish a Framework for Network Architecture Development of Dominant Carrier Networks / Investigation on the Commission's Own Motion Into Open Access and Network Architecture Development of Dominant Carrier Networks. (See Appendix DSL, sections 1.1 and 7.3.) Some CLECs may have agreements setting the installation interval for both conditioned and non-conditioned installations at seven days. For these CLECs the Standard Interval is seven days.
