one at this time. Mr. Tom Rodgers has now joined. All lines will be open

Transcription

1 Verizon Internal - Change Management Meeting April 20, 2004 Confirmation # Operator: during this broadcast. one at this time. Mr. Tom Rodgers has now joined. All lines will be open Thanks, Carmen. My name is Tom Rodgers. This is the Change Management call for April. Joining me in the room to my left: Paul Figglestaller: Teresa Castro: Dexter Lilly: Nelson Elbery: Bob Urisay: Dean Elliott: Bob Kopelli: Beth McReynolds: Nancy Sanders: Nancy Sanders: Carol: Carol: Julie Lever: Julie Lever: Amy Kwak: Amy Kwak: Benny Omlis: Benny Omlis: John Boshier, Covad Communications. Paul Figglestaller, MCI. Teresa Castro, VarTec. Dex Lilly, VarTec. Nelson Elbery (sp?) as Expedia Communications. Bob Urisay, Allegiance Telecom. Cheryl Peterson, AT&T. Dean Elliott, SPP. Bob Kopelli, FBP. Beth McReynolds, Verizon. Bobbie Dodson, Verizon. Beth Cohen, Verizon. And just in time to introduce yourself. Nancy Sanders, COMCAST. Good morning, Nancy. Good morning. Those on the conference bridges, would you introduce yourselves, please? Carol. Hi Carol? How are you doing? Good. Julie Lever, Verizon. Hi Julie. Hi Tom. Amy Kwak, CTSI. Hi Amy. Hi. Benny Omlis, New Star. Hi Benny. Morning. 1

2 Tammy Swensen: Tammy Swensen: Stacy Hizzon: Stacy Hizzon: Noreen Carroll: Martha Russell: Rebecca Baldwin: Rebecca Baldwin: Steven Cuttle: Steven Cuttle: Brenda Joy: Brenda Joy: Amy Brown: Amy Brown: Tanya Coates: Peggy Rubino: Tammy Swensen, Accenture. Hi Tammy. Good morning. Kim Isaacs, Eschelon. Kim, good morning. Good morning, Tom. Stacy Hizzon, Birch Telecom. Stacy, nice to hear from you. Thank you. Matt Connelly, Birch Telecom. Hi Matt. Noreen Carroll, Birch Telecom. Crystal Callsey and Sandra Boyd with HTC. Good morning. This is Martha Russell with Wholesale Billing Claims Report, Verizon. Oh, okay. Rebecca Baldwin, TelCove. Hi Rebecca. Hi Tom. Steven Cuttle, Verizon. Steven, good morning. Good morning. Brenda Joy, Verizon. Hi Brenda. Hi. Amy Brown with Time Warner. Hi Amy. Good morning, Tom. Nick Amroni with Verizon. Hi Nick. Good morning. Hey Tom. (inaudible) Z-Tel. Tanya Coates with Verizon. Hi Tanya, and someone else spoke up at the same time. Hi Tom. It's Peggy. 2

3 Lynn Sedlak: Jamie Rawls: Jamie Rawls: Jamie Rawls: Hi Peggy Rubino, Z-Tel. Lynn Sedlak with Verizon. Hi Lynn. Next up? Hey, Tom. This is Jamie. Verizon. Hey, good morning, Jamie. Good morning. Will Cindy be joining us? I'm not sure, Tom. I'll check. Thank you. Appreciate everyone's attendance here in Irving's space. It's nice to see everyone in person at least once a quarter, so I know it's with me moving to Philadelphia, it is kind of tough to get back to Texas even though I do have family here. It does take a little bit out of you to get on a plane and get down here, so appreciate you all taking the effort to do that. A couple of folks I've visited with on the phone and ed Nancy, good morning, and Steve from FPC. Anyone joining the call for the first time? Okay Martha Russell: This is Martha Russell. Hi Martha. If anyone has any questions throughout the call, if you'd ask you know, I encourage you to ask a question, or if you feel like you want to contact me after the call, please do so, either or phone. Jamie, have you heard from Cindy. Jamie Rawls: Not as yet, Tom. Maybe if we began, we could circle back if she's able. Well, the meeting agenda is online. We'll try to follow it as best we can. I do have let's see. Nick is joining us from the WCCC. Probably, in respect to his schedule, we can bump him up and let Nick address the WCCC issue this morning. Stacy Hizzon: Stacy Hizzon: meeting. Stacy Hizzon: Stacy Hizzon: remember the name. Tom, this is Stacy Hizzon with Birch. Can I say something first? Well sure. We were unable to open some of the documents on the website for today's Were you getting an error message or what? Yeah, that we were unable to open them. Which document? Do you remember? Yeah, there was the Open Issues document. Is that correct, Matt? I can't Yeah, there's four the Closed Issues, Open Issues, Implemented CRs, and the Deleted and Cancelled CRs. Those four documents if you click on them, it says, "We're sorry. We're unable to process your request." Well, fortunately we won't really be needing any of those today. Okay, great. But we will investigate why the website's not giving you access to documents. Will they be made available then once that's resolved? 3

4 Well, I assume they are available. They're just there's a (blank audio). Thanks for sharing that. That was funny. Yeah, I assume the document is there. There's just a web problem in gaining access to it. Have you tried refreshing your browser a couple of time? Tanya Coates: Tanya Coates: Yeah, it's been going on for a week, ever since the notification came out. Tom, this is Tanya. I actually had the same problem. Well, we'll see what we can do to take care of it. All right. And Tom, along with that same subject, it's been a little bit difficult to get accurate documents pertaining to the meeting that's coming (inaudible) that was posted last week and showing as 2003 versus today's agenda. You sure that wasn't a browser problem? Okay there is from time-to-time you'll go to the website and it'll be a flashback to this time last year, and themselves Well, the accurate date of April 20 th for upcoming meeting, but the documents Okay, we'll check into that too. Every time I've encountered it, if you clean your history on your internet browser, on your cache, because sometimes it goes back to an old version of that page and I've experienced that where we've gone back to June 2003 several times when the current is actually there, and it seems to be in that browser search version, but sure, we'll certainly try to take see what we can do to take care of that. Were you accessing it from the calendar? yesterday. Yeah. I cleaned mine, and you know we discovered it in our conversation There's several ways to access the information. One of them is to just go to the Wholesale Calendar, and today's meeting is there and all of the meeting materials will take you to the link, and I assume that would always be a fresh page as opposed to if you went to the original order - Change Management home page, you might keep bringing up an old version of it, but we'll see what we can do to get the agenda up there. Any other discussion before we get started? Nick, are you with us? Yes, Tom. Good morning. I wanted to give you first shot giving us a status of the WCCC, and I think you wanted to discuss some of the bulletin enhancements. That's it. Go ahead. We ll take the one that is related to the straw man first. Nick, we're losing you're cutting out here. Are you taking right now? Yes. Is this any better? Keep talking for a minute. Great. This is Nick Amroni from the WCCC Verizon. Okay, we're getting you now. Okay, good. All right. I'd like to address a couple of things. The first is regarding a straw man we have put together. This was a result of a request that was made by the CLECs to add some more detail to the outage notifications. So I went through certain examples for the East in the Change Management session for the East a couple of weeks ago, and I'd like to do the same for the West today. presentation? A presentation was probably sent out. Tom, should everyone have the 4

5 Yeah. For those in the room, it's on, I think, page 6 after the first tab. Great. Great. Section 1 through 6. One through 5 and 6, the West. Yeah, I see that. Right. The existing set of notifications have certain details to them. Based on the request that was put in by the CLECs, we were asked to add certain additional pieces of information for example: corrective action to clear the incident, the final assessment of the root cause itself, and then some detail regarding the minutes of outage or degradation. What we have done here from a Verizon perspective is taking a stab at putting a straw man together. What you see on the slide that says, "Change Notification (West Example Initial)." Does everyone have that? There are two parts to this. There is the original on the left and there's a straw man on the right. The original indicates what we have been sending out so far, and the straw man on the right is what we plan on sending out, and the objective here is two-fold. Number one to make it consistent look and field wise without notifications on the East, and then secondly, to add some details in there. Everett (sp?), perhaps, has the CLECs for there. As we go through the original on the left, there is a severity that we start off with. Then there's the subject. There's resolution. There are some details. What we are proposing in the straw man, which is to the right, is the ID itself, the subject. Now during the East call, we were asked to put the severity back in, so I'm going to add that back into this. The data and time of the bulletin, the data and time that the issue was identified, and there's a certain set of items starting with report version number, etcetera, going down into a documentation and packet. What we have added to this is some additional detail. Now, it is not listed in here. If you notice, there's something if there's other details in parentheses, what you'll notice in there is information related to what exactly the CLECs might be experiencing as this occurs. The corrective action in this case, since this was initial notification, will not amount to much and hence, the NA in this case, but the total minutes of outage was a request that was made through the notification not to the notification, but to the CLEC request itself, and that is one that we may not be able to address. What I suggest is that the data and time of the bulletin, and the data and time of the issue identification should be enough to get a sense of the minutes of outage and degradation, and we can have some discussion around this, but this is the first light. This is the initial notification. If we move onto the next slide, the title should indicate change notification, West example Final. You'll notice that there's some additional verbiage. There are certain changes that will be made as a result of the call on the East. In the detail section towards the bottom where we say that a technical bridge has been established, that verbiage will be changed to an internal technical bridge has been established. And then again, the details should help out help the CLECs decide what actions to take with this issue, but I think the focus for this vertically I have heard was more in the East. The issue came from the East more than the West, but for the West you can see the straw man indicates that the look and feel will be like the East moving forward. I just wanted to go through this presentation. Any questions at this point? Nick, this Matt with Birch. Can you give me what's the definition of version number? What's that supposed to reference? Yeah, Matt? Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, I'm sorry. I couldn't get you. Could you repeat that again? Sure. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. I was just curious as to what the definition of version number was? Right, and which slide are you referring to, Matt? Oh, I'm on Initial. Nick, that's on both the Initial and the Final. 5

6 Great. The version number essentially would be the version of the software, and Jamie, feel free to sort of jump in and add to this. Jamie Rawls: The version I believe was part of the East notification that was mentioned to identify the version software essentially used a monthly release that refer to those releases in months and not by our internal versions. We've never really used that field, hence the NA. suggestions. well take it off. not applicable in that case. And we can take that off if it doesn't add any value. At this point I'm open to Well, if those could be NA on the East and the West, then I guess you might as Right. Is it always going to be NA in the East as well? Yes, I mean if you look at the notifications that were sent out for the East, it was Nick, this is Cheryl Peterson with AT&T. Then is that a confirmation that every single business rule field is identical in East and West in the LSOG version because there could be a possibility that there may be a situation where there is a field difference or a specific impasse, that impasse one version versus the other. Right. Is not that user formidy (sp?)? Okay, I'm having some difficulty in hearing, but let me try to answer that question. The version number would make sense for certain types of outages. Now, in an issue of this sort where there's a slow response and if there's a problem with a database, the version number would not add much value, but if there was actually a bug in the software for a certain CLEC-impacting release, then the version number would add value. So from that perspective, in the examples that you see here, it is NA, but to answer your question, it will not always be NA. Thank you. Because I didn't see removing if there were different situations. Thank you. So, at this point should we then leave it in? Yes, please. Sounds like it needs to be there for those times when it Right. Any other questions? Yeah, Nick. This is Matt again. Yes. The let me see here. The area impacted I see you have a region field, so is the area a geographical, like even further defined geographical region? Is that the intent of that field? Yes. That is correct. So I might see a state. Would it go down as far a city? It may not go down to a city. No, I think, if I'm not mistaken, where this probably comes into play in the East and probably not in the West, and the reason it would come into play in the East is because you've got three different (inaudible) systems at play that could be causing (inaudible), and so you've got East (inaudible) and you've got East (inaudible) jurisdictions within the south, three states (inaudible) and so, I think if I'm not mistaken, Nick, that's probably what that means. No, you're exactly right, so the MB Re W, etcetera, so based on the types of the systems, certain areas would be impacted, and I could go into the details of how this is set up, but largely for the West, 6

7 the systems span across. To make a long story short, so more often than not, you're going to see NA. There might be an odd case, that we might be able to break it down finer, in which case you might see something in there. I'm wondering, in the West this is Cheryl again however in the West there have been some exchanges in some of those directory impacts in California. There are some unique things that do show up in there, because I have seen them come through the Alert Notifications where there were state specific. Right. In most cases, based on the type of outage, it'll be not applicable, but in certain cases, as I have said, there could be a listing, specific state listing, yes. Nick, a concern that we have would be looking at not just (inaudible) surroundings, but actually the interface outage itself, whether there be IP situations or whether there'd be a T3 Card, if you're familiar with, or just different scenarios there, recognizing in some cases, that may only impact one CLEC, however it's still important to get those alerts. As a customer it's extremely important to get those alerts. Do you have a potential straw man copy that you have prepared for interstate outages? Or connectivity, not to the level of something in parsing the coding on the system itself? Would you repeat the last sentence again? I think that she's asking if there's if we're planning on putting anything together as a straw man, and actually I think it would actually it's a new functionality because it does not exist today for connectivity issues or interface outage issues where perhaps only one customer may be impacted by that connectivity concern or interface outage. Okay, now Did I get that correctly, Cheryl? It's right to a point where let's say the IP addresses at in CORBA in Verizon West, something happens and those IP addresses that everyone's directed to in the West let's say something happened on your side, and those IP addresses impacted all of the CORBA users because IP address that you send back to it's the individual CLEC that's going to be different, but the ones that we direct to on the Verizon side would be the same, and if something happened there, would there be an outage or alert notification? Okay, the short answer is no. The notification come out if more than one CLEC is experiencing the issue, and for a couple of reasons. If there was some IP addresses related to AT&T either a change happened on your side or on our side and you lost the connectivity if it was just AT&T or some CLEC, then we would not send out that notification. It would be confusing to the other CLECs. Now, what would happen though is you'd have a ticket open, and as a result of that ticket to the WCCC, root cause, resolution, analysis, etcetera, would be done, and we'd be in a position to provide you that information. Well, Nick, this is where our concern is because if the onus is being put on us as a customer to open that trouble ticket when in cases there are no end situations within Verizon that that activity is going on and we're not getting that notification even us directly as a customer? No, actually what happens is if there is an issue internally that we know of, then the systems groups will open and will open a ticket with the WCCC, so internally we would know at that state and we'd get in touch with you, so it doesn't go unnoticed. The question is, you know, off of the many, many CLECs that we have as customers, if one had an issue and we sent out a notification, the notification typically would help a CLEC decide, you know, what changes to make in their procedures, currently to address the issue, and if a notification did come out along these lines, it might be confusing to some people, and it may not serve its purpose. But I think in trying to address the problem itself and in making sure it doesn't happen again, etcetera, the process currently is to have a WCCC ticket, which is open either to the CLECs, as a CLEC calls it in, or internally through our systems groups, and then we follow that through to conclusion and resolution. Let me just follow on here for one second. I think that one of the things that needs to be understood here. Yes, sometimes we do know internally because somebody notifies the WCCC that there is a problem, but more often than not, you, as the customer, probably know it before we even at the WCCC know it. You know, just like most of your companies, there's a lot going on internally, and some of them are very large, and getting through all of the various channels of communication, sometimes is not as quick as we'd like it be, so if you're sending in orders, and you immediately see the problem when the order doesn't get through, that's probably going to be faster than when we get it through our (inaudible) set of internal communications that something's not right, so please don't stop sending in a trouble ticket when you see that something is not going right on your end of the fence, because we may not know about it at that point. I just had a question. In the example where the trouble ticket is opened internally by the WCCC, what group contacts a CLEC to let them know that there's an issue, and what contact point are there using, Nick? Typically, it would be the WCCC who might get in touch with the CLEC. 7

8 Is there does the WCCC have a designated contact point at each of these CLECs already, or how do you follow up after the call I guess is the question. Jamie Rawls: Nick, this is Jamie, if you want me to jump in there. Go ahead. Jamie Rawls: Generally, we've worked with customers extensively in the West, so we have contact situations for mass contacts. If not, we will look to the CLEC profile and get contact information from there. Most often we do not though. We've already worked with customers from those CLECs and have the contact information. From the profile? Yup. It's the all things connectivity form. Jamie Rawls: If we can't get information from the profile, that is one other tool that we use, but we work so often with the CLECs that we have that information from our interactions prior. Nelson Elbery: go through the profile in my head, and I know we have billing systems contact designated in the profile. I'm not sure that there's anything for EEI or WISE or anything like that. Jamie Rawls: Generally, if we have to go to either the CLEC connectivity form that Cindy's group has or the CLEC profile, there is a contact information there. That's usually somebody who updates the profile or is kind of an account manager role, and once we contact them, they're able to provide us internally their systems folks that we then call. Jamie Rawls: So you're going to call the profile contact? Yes sir. I got ya. Thanks. You all got my question in. Thanks, John. That's okay. But I have another question. Well, I was just thinking to myself, I'm a contact and I've never gotten a call from anybody on any outages, but I don't know, maybe we haven't had any. Yeah, let me address one of the points here very quickly. It is not typical for, you know, just one CLEC to be impacted through the OSS's. More often than not, if one CLEC is impacted, it's probably in the connection between the CLEC and Verizon, somewhere on the Internet, so that's when we'd get a call from CLEC rather than us finding out that there's an issue. Right, and more likely that's the example and we're going to call you anyway. Exactly, and if there's an internal issue, chances are other than the cases a couple of cases we've had with AT&T where a certain cap appeared and then it affected AT&T only more often than not, if the OSS is impacted, then more than one CLEC is impacted regardless, and then we send out the notification on that. Nick, this is Cheryl with AT&T again, and I guess we experienced it a little bit different than how you're explaining it, but we'll take that as a sideline conversation and address it with Verizon, but you were associates (sp?) here on two things to ensure one of the concerns that AT&T really wants to capture is, and I do notice it in your straw man thank you is the fact that we specifically want the root cause, and we want to keep that focus because we want to ensure that with that root cause that working together with Verizon we can zero in and get rid of client issues that are occurring, specifically if they are connectivity, let alone with that system being separate sideline issue. Is there a reason that duration is not being captured? The challenge for duration itself is that the duration may be different for different CLECs, and during the initial notification, it's very difficult to determine what the exact duration is, and towards the end also, at best you can make what the impact was overall. Adding duration adds a certain amount of complexity. I think what's important is knowing when we found out that there was an issue and, you know, how quickly the action was taken, and let me try to give an example. You know, as you're well aware, the databases are usually broken down, different portions, and based on the impact, a certain ADO (sp?) impact, and not all CLECs could be impacted as a result of that in which case, a duration might apply for certain CLECs, but a smaller duration might apply for other CLECs, and just giving a round number confuses the issue overall. 8

9 Well, but the notification duration itself and Verizon working the issue? Un-huh. For instance, in the example that you used, there would be an initial notification of when it was identified, and then there would be another notification to say it's fixed or relative to the fact that we found the problem and here is what the estimated time for fix is, etcetera, along those lines, you capture duration. problems. Well, the struggle is, you know, let's assume it's a database that had some Un-huh. And you started bringing up the database piece by piece. Chances are, by the time you've brought up the system completely and done your testing, the system's already been available for 20 minutes or so, so you already lost that time, and some of that information has come through lost that we are to go in and look at, which is done even after the notification is sent out. The objective of the notification is to try and get the CLECs the information that the outage is not gone. It's been addressed, but then there's more work that goes on behind the scenes looking at the logs in detail to see which components came up when, what the issue is specifically, so that takes a little bit more of time, and that's where the hesitation comes in. I'd actually like to know what is the business function that would be enhanced by knowing the amount of time that an issue took to resolve? Well, for AT&T, what we're doing is obviously, we want to recognize that it's an availability and how it's impacting us as a company for unplanned outages and scenarios like that, and Well, stop there for a second because that actually is handled through availability issues an a measure (sp?) that we have, so, you know, and we have a responsibility to have the interfaces available and up I can't remember what the specific measure is but it is recorded, so that However, how is that duration captured? I know it's reported. I know that you have had it to be available, but how are you reporting that amount of time that it doesn't meet that availability? Well, I think that's part of the whole the metric, however the metric is calculated, and that's in a I assume that we have availability metrics in the West. Nick, is that correct? Yeah, that's absolutely right. So there are ways, you know, that information that is given out about our availability that according to the metric that that's where you would find that information. Bob Urisay: So if AT&T's, this is Bob Urisay, so if AT&T's service was brought up first and then my Allegiance service was brought up an hour later, what s the point of measure that AT&T would see - that their service was available longer than Allegiance. I don't know the answer to that question, because I don't I mean, frankly, there's whole other forums that deal with how metrics get calculated and how the performances get measured, and this is not this is not a forum for that and I don't know how it works. My questions are geared around the fact that we have a group internally that are obviously are looking for the detail in the user notification, so I'm trying to understand where Verizon's coming from as well so that I can determine exactly zero in on which ones we truly need and truly want. I think that our goal is to get the service back up and running as absolutely quickly as we can. That is our number one priority. That is where our energy and resources get focused. Where we have to capture information for metrics that we have to provide to the various commissions and to the CLECs, obviously that takes the resources to do that as well, but I think what we're trying very hard to do here is to focus our internal resources on the things that makes business work, so if you can give me a good reason why duration would be something that would make the business work better, then it will definitely be something we would take internally and talk about and consider, but the way we look at it, it's devoting extra resources to doing something that really doesn't provide a good business benefit. Nelson Elbery: what business That's the way you look at it. That's exactly why I'm putting it out there is, you know, come back and tell me Nelson Elbery: And the fact that we would like to have that information shared is reason enough to request that, and that I understand that - that issue's trying to tell you that internally within AT&T, they have a need for 9

10 that information. Now, whether you agree with that or not is irrelevant here. The fact is it's your customer that's asking you for anything you can do to assist them so that internally with AT&T, as you speak up internally with Verizon, that that information will be able to be used for inherent purpose now. And I'm looking for give me the business need here and I don't have that right Well the business need is to zero in on chronic issues that are occurring, whether they be on the Verizon side or our own side or whatever to actually help each other to identify that there has been x amount of duration, and that duration keeps occurring and we've looked at a root cause, it seems to be the same scenario that keeps popping up, and that helps us both to get that problem fixed. And I think root cause is absolutely one of the things that absolutely gets us there and that's why we are beginning to put more information into the notifications about root cause because that's clearly that will identify client problems. I think, for your purposes though, if you're looking for how often a certain type of outage is occurring, you do have some base information in terms when the bulletin came out, you know, when the issue was identified, etcetera, so I think that serves that purpose right there. In trying to fix the root cause, it's in our interest to fix it. Inward, you know, we get hit by pretty heavy penalties if we don't perform, so, you know, it's to our mutual benefit that the systems work well, and we are very focused. We have internal teams that look at these outages on a regular basis, very regular basis, that our niche calls daily, and the corresponding teams internally within Verizon are grouped and we try to get to the bottom of why something happened, and if it reoccurs, once again, that's not we don't like that, and we take action against it, so again, if you're looking high level times of how long the outage occurred, that's already there within the notification. If it is what are we doing to address an issue, then by all means get in touch with us at the WCCC, and we'll work with you on that. I think that the if I'm not mistaken, the next step here, Nick, was to come back with the feedback that we got specifically from the East and some of them you've raised here, and to come back with the next reiteration of the what the proposed bulletin would look like, and it will come back without a duration on it because that's Verizon's position is that the peaks we're not going to put on the bulletin. on here. Nelson Elbery: And who made that decision? That's a Verizon decision. Who in Verizon? There's several there's a lot of people involved in decision-making that goes You're saying approximate duration is I think approximately duration, Nick just said, is on here in terms of the bulletin time frame when the first one went out and when the final bulletin is issued. And the metric itself does contain detail at a trouble ticket level on duration, Cheryl, and the information is on the website, so any customer that has an interest in trouble ticket system, trouble ticket on the website, you need access to WISE performance metrics for the state in question, all the detail you want. Nelson Elbery: So what you're saying I didn't mean to interrupt you what you're saying, Beth, is that that decision has no CLEC involved in it. Well, I think that all those decisions have CLECs Nelson Elbery: Well, all I'm saying is specifically, it's an internal Verizon decision, and were any CLECs involved in that discussion, as far as if there was anything on the CLEC side of the issue? Here's what happened. After each meeting, there was a discussion about the bulletins not having enough information. AT&T came in and put in a Change Request to update the bulletin. Verizon went back, took a look at all of the requests that AT&T had made on their CR and said, "What is it here that we can do to meet the needs that the CLEC is asking for in terms of more information?" And we agreed that there should be more information, and we came back with a straw man to be able to discuss the components, and the one things that we have we're not going to come we're never going to be in a position where we're going to do everything that the CLECs want or everything that Verizon wants. We're trying to come to some kind of a middle ground here, and so I think that what Verizon did was to put out a straw man to newly meet the most critical components of the concerns around the notification, and what we heard was that CLECs are really not able to determine what it is that's wrong, so number one, they know even on their side, this is something that maybe they can do to help this. Is it something more than just, you 10

11 know, we're looking at it to just kind of give some kind of information about what is it that's going on here a database that went down. That happens. I mean, it happens in all of our systems. Some major systems, some major back end system, and had some recess or something like that and there was, you know, several minutes or time that it was down, so that period of time we're going to let you know that. So that I think our goal here was to provide more of the "what" as opposed to some of the other pieces, and so there was to your point, this is our proposal back. Should we expect that was going to be accepted as we proposed it? Probably not, because that's the nature of this beast, except that we rarely come to total agreement on everything that we have back and forth. Nelson Elbery: that you were talking about? Nelson Elbery: that information? And as I would understand, except was duration (inaudible) in these meetings No, because this was Was that covered with the CLECs? That contentious (inaudible)? Do you need No, this was an AT&T proposal. This was AT&T's change request. And I guess that's where I take a little bit adverse it's Cheryl how the approach is coming back because I've been approached (inaudible) approaching the whole situation on a question of how and why, and immediately a defense goes up with Verizon of like, we're not going to do it. No matter what you say, we're not going to do it. Let me see if I could make a couple of points here. I think from a CLEC perspective, if there is an outage, if I were a CLEC, number one I'd want to know which functions are impacted, and that's the information we are trying to give in these notifications, and then I'd want to know what can I do internally so I can still put in my orders and continue my activities, and that information is included here. Additionally, if I wanted to know as to how long approximately the duration was, that information is in the bulletin also, and then if I wanted to get an assessment of whether or not a similar type of outage has repeated itself, then again, I get all the bulletins, so I'd be in a position to determine that, so most of the information is already in there. The question is that putting exact duration what do we accomplish? Because that exact duration does take time to determine and it is usually very close to what is on these notification reports, so rather than put something down as exact duration and then find out that something actually took longer to resolve or lesser time to resolve, it makes more sense to go by these notifications, and then let the metric address it because the metrics amount to heavy penalties for us. And yet this is Cheryl I appreciate what's coming back and that's something as far as clarification from AT&T that we'll need to take back to our division level that brought this to us to actually give this information, and you're correct, I'm not even concerned with the fact that Verizon in the past had not always given root cause. And the reason we really need root cause is not to determine what's wrong on our side, because we've done a lot research, is that the fact that we need to understand what to do about flowing orders through on the production stuff because if there is a true delay and the order's being accepted, we can actually contact our own centers and pull back on orders, so there isn't a tremendous overload of reflow, which the WCCC and the rest of your team on CERT certainly would be appreciative of working together. Yes. I think that let's also be clear here that this is we're kind of bringing this here because we wanted to provide information here that we're making a change at least in the format and in terms of some of the content on the bulletin. This was not a Change Request that came in. Yes it was. in the West. Yes, it was. I put it in myself. Oh, okay. Did? That's why I turned to Tom and asked him that question. Bobbie? It's just not rated in the East. I don't know if 11

12 last year (inaudible) previous to that. I don't think it was I don t know if the East brought this in yet, in here, but I put it in, in December of Excellent. I think that our next step here is to bring back the next version of what this is going to look like based on some of the input that we've had, and I think the goal here is to actually get this into production as quickly as we possibly can as a working document, and so that's kind of where we are, I think, headed at this point. Nick, do you are you looking to put out at any point in the near future or are we brining this back to the next month's Change Management meeting for final review? What I'd like to do, Beth, is based on the feedback from the session on the East a couple of weeks ago and this feedback today, I'll put together the modified straw man, and then we discuss that during next month's session. In the meantime, what I'd also like to do is probably think up and I'm sorry, who's on from AT&T? I'm sorry. I couldn't get all the names. getting fairly decent notifications. Hi, I am Cheryl Peterson, and I first of all, I do want to say in the West we're Okay, great. So I think your straw man pretty much mirrors what's going on in the West today, however root cause and then the question on duration I'll need clarified. Okay, Nick, so what's your plan, because we actually need to move on here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let me come back with the modified straw man for next month's session. In the meantime, we'll try to reach out to some of the folks to see what more can be done or what can not be time, etcetera, and then hopefully next month we should be in a position to put this one to rest. This is Matt with Birch again. I know we're trying to move along here in the interest of time, but we have a couple more questions about this document. We'll be happy to send them over in an , so who would we send those to? Tom Rodgers. We'll get those over to you then. Thanks. Thanks, Nick. Look forward to hearing from you in May. Cindy, have you joined the call? Cindy Towne: Cindy Towne: release. Yes, I have. I'm sorry I'm late, Tom. Good morning, Cindy. Good morning everybody. Cindy joins us to give an update on the CLEC test environment for the June Cindy Towne: Hi, my name is Cindy Towne, and I have taken over the West CTE from Jamie Rawls for those of you who have not already had any conversations with me. I've dealt with, I have the connectivity management for East and West and I have CTE now for East and West as well. I would just like to run down the pertinent dates for the June release. As a reminder any intentions that passed the June release, we would have liked to have had in our hands yesterday on April 19 th. If you haven't given us your intention, we would really appreciate it if you could. On May 3 rd, your final test plans are due, including the scenarios you're looking to test, so that we can get everything squared away and prepped for the release week testing. May 14 th CTE will be closed as drop code for the June release in that week. May 17 th you'll be able to start testing your EDI and CORBA for the June release. 12

13 And June 10 th is the testing end date. The June release will be in production on June 14 th. regarding your testing and test plan? So, does anyone have any questions regarding the timeline or who to contact Cindy, we'll keep a place over here for any changes to connectivity associated with the June release. Other than the CORBA security software upgrade, are there any others? Cindy Towne: security upgrade. Cindy Towne: that so I can go back and? Cindy Towne: Cindy Towne: Cindy Towne: Cindy Towne: No. Help me through what you've just said. We've not seen anything on a CORBA It was in April, wasn't it Cheryl Cindy? Yes it was. All the information was sent out. Who was speaking? Cindy, tell me if there are vacancies (sp?). Can you provide what date you sent Was that change East and West? It was East only. Oh, that's why. Thank you. Sorry, sorry, Cheryl. I should have picked that up myself. The West had already, I guess, had submitted a 128-bit thing. Yes, it was that. Just the SSL, right? Was it the SSL, Cindy? Yes. Thanks, Cindy. I guess the pre release call was last week, Beth. Last week. Perfect, so everything seems progressing on the (inaudible) Jimmy, did you hear when I called to speak? I wanted to give you the opportunity to do so now if you have something to say. Jimmy: I always have something to say. I know that's why. Jimmy: No, actually, Tom, it was just my monthly participation if there were any WCCC issues, and knew we were going over the straw man, so anyone Jimmy: website. Well, and I knew you were there and I wanted to acknowledge that and to ask Yeah, so no, so I'm good. Thank you. Steven Cuttle joins us to give us an update on the enhancements to the 13

14 Steven Cuttle: Thank, Tom. Good morning everyone. I just wanted to go over a few changes that have been implanted with the Wholesale website in the last month or so. I wanted to start out first with web-based training, and this is the web-based training has been updated for the February LSOG 5 release. All web-based training modules do reflect now the February LSOG 5 release. As far as some of the web-based training modules, the directory training listing training module was launched this month for the West and the East, and to highlight the new content will be featured in the April 28 th workshop, CLEC Ordering workshop, which is scheduled, so I would strongly recommend those of you interested to have folks attend that workshop on the 28 th. It is you can register vis-à-vis events calendar as well as through the web the CLEC education page, and as far as the web-based training LSOG 6 content updates on, those are in progress, so Kathy Hamm (sp?) from the CLEC education team and her folks are now working on converting all their web-based training content from LSOG 5 to LSOG 6, and they're hoping to have that completed within the June time frame. Regarding other areas of the web, with order and pre-order documentation, I'm happy to say that order samples and pre-order samples have now been converted over to LSOG 6. That was completed a week or so ago as well as the local ordering guide. LSOG 6 updates are not completed. We did launch a slightly updated version of the local ordering guide page, and it's hopefully, you'll find it a little more user friendly. The content has not changed any, with the exception that we did this doesn't really pertain to the West so much but we did add a product interval guide portlet page, which for those of you who do business in the East as well, do get the internal guide documents for the East, and then those link to the preorder transaction for the West to get two day intervals, so that is a change specific to that new look and feel to the local ordering guide page. Steven Cuttle: Steve? Yeah. I'm sorry. This is John Boshier. I'm not sure I understood that, so what's now is that can you go over that what's available on the West now for me again? Steven Cuttle: Oh, sure. What we've added to the local ordering guide page under "About Ordering Local Services," there is a clickable link that says Product Interval Guide, and when you click on that, it brings you to what we call a portlet page or a sub-page, which says Product Interval Guide, and there's an East and West section. For the East, the link takes you to the appointment scheduling inquiry transaction, the pre-order transaction, which is used to determine due date intervals in the West, so you can click on that and it actually takes you deeper into the Local Ordering Guide to that actual pre-order transaction page. Steven Cuttle: So does that give you the intervals for products in the West then? Yes. The transaction does. Steven Cuttle: It's just that I'm sorry, will inquire, so the information will take you to the preorder transaction, so you can read about how the transaction's prolonged, look at a sample of it, but you don't do have to go into WISE to actually perform transaction. You were looking for a matrix? Yeah, so if I go and do all that will I get line sharing two-day interval? Steven Cuttle: Not directly through this content. This is from a learner perspective. This would - (inaudible) Thank you for clarifying. I didn't want to miss - confuse anyone. (inaudible) Steven Cuttle: The only two other points I wanted to make as far as part of the CLEC support retirement effort, a change that was made this month was the CTE information that was found in the CLEC Support Site is those links have been removed. They are currently and they have been for quite some time in the systems support section of the web, but I wanted to bring it to your attention in case that some folks have URLs linking to CLEC support, they'd want to go into the systems and Systems Support Page within the Local Ordering Guide and then click on, in this case, CTE Testing West, and if they then wanted to bookmark it, they want to refresh their bookmark. And the final item I just wanted to bring to your attention one thing that my team is working directly on. It's in the Local Ordering Guide, we do have error code documentation for the East, and we've been working on creating similar error code documentation for the West, and we're hoping to have that West content launched by the end of May. 14

15 Steven Cuttle: Steven Cuttle: have questions? Steven Cuttle: Steven Cuttle: And that will be on training side. I'm sorry. That also will be in the Local Ordering Guide. I understand. Sure. Those were the updates that I had to report on this month. Does anyone Well, as always Steven, thanks for your help and participation. Sure, my pleasure. I'll see you next month. Thank you. Thank you. Carol, you out there. Julie Lever: Hi Tom. It's Julie. I'm actually going to cover Carol's piece today. Well, how about that? This is the Pennsylvania OSS Uniformity project. Either Kim Brown or Carol Yozzo or this morning, Julie Lever, will give us an update on that project. Julie Lever: Morning, Tom. Good morning. Good morning everybody. There's two things I wanted to mention this morning in relation to the PA OSS Uniformity project. On the website, I just wanted to bring your attention that we posted the March 18 th seminar Q&A questions. That's been on there since the beginning of April. It's on the same website as the seminar information packet, the Pennsylvania OSS Uniformity website. If anybody needs the URL, I'd be glad to give it to you. Also, I wanted to let you know I'm going to update that March 18 th Q&A Seminar. I've received some questions since the seminar, you know, and once I have all the answers, I'll post and update, just so everybody will be able to see what all the various CLECs have been asking. We expect that to be out there, I'd say, by the end of next week. Also, I wanted to let you know that on that same website, we posted the Pennsylvania non-pilot and pilot CLLI codes. That was the first request at the seminar if we could also provide CLLIs for all of the NPA and that is now on the website as well. Thank you. Julie Lever: No problem and we're set. We're on target. There's no problems with the conversion so far, so that's all I have for today. Any questions? Okay, great, I'll talk to everybody next month. Julie Lever: Thanks Julie, nicely done. Thank you. Bobbie, want us to defer talking about business rule engine until a little bit later, so we're right at our break. Suppose we come back at a quarter til, and we'll just take a few minutes to get up and stretch. We'll keep the bridge on. We'll keep it on mute 6. BREAK I'd like to welcome everyone back from the break. Give everybody on the bridge a few minutes to come back. We'll be looking at the Items by release document. One of the things that Beth has asked me to do from time to time was standardize the meeting across East and West and this is one of those instances where we've always discussed the Items by release in the morning and we've done a PWG prioritization in the afternoon, and while it's done in the afternoon.so I guess my question to you guys is, is there a preference and any objections to us doing this discussion in the afternoon in May? Female Speaker1: I'm wondering if the prioritization number 15

16 Known prioritization. Not really other than catching a plane. Yeah, I know. And sometimes you get caught in discussions on these. Okay, I guess the understanding would be if we're moving along nicely, and we have time, then we just keep going and address Items by release in the morning, so that those that are catching a flight could leave at, I guess, 3 o'clock. 2:30 or 3 o'clock is normal. Most of the West meetings haven't been slow. We'll try to respect that time. From an agenda perspective, I'll try to I'll show it in the afternoon, but if we're moving ahead, we'll address it in the morning. (inaudible) phone number for those of the companies that call in, we can Yeah, that needs to stay at a fixed time. Bobbie's here to give us a run-through of the June release and she's putting on her glasses now. Yeah, so she can speak. Okay, the April release went in on April the 12 th. We had attributes that were implemented for the top release edit. Again, these will really not be implemented until May, but the other packages did go in, and the pilot exchanges were listed below, and then the remaining ones will actually be implementing for the rest of the State of Pennsylvania on July the 12 th. The other one that went in was the First phase for the Batch Hot Cut process, which will now allow you to use a batch hot cut if you have the post up provisioning tracking system. You can now use designs of A&D. And the last one that went in was for the full automation for the Japanese on phase C. And the fifth one, we have an initiative that was a Type 5. It was associated with this, and so I think probably at the next CMP meeting, we'll ask we'll see if you're in agreement that we have another commitment for the Type 5 to be able to have that one closed out. Now, moving into the June release, we had the pre-release call last week on that and as it comes to the four issues that we had, I won't be revealing those. The first one we have on the list is the provider notification indicator for the wirelines and wireless, and basically we're going to be adding a new indicator of W for the Wireless L&T off the provider notification on the end pre-sale. Anybody have any questions? The only question I have is not that itself, but the fact that when you're not the particular Type 4, up to your Type 4 list, this particular one no longer shows on the Items by release Type 4. Your Type 4 Items by release List because that's a prioritized CR. There's a list of Type 5's. There's a priority over Type 4's, and there are several that I found on the documentation release schedule that aren't matching over to at least the copy that I printed out last late last week. It's on there. So, is this another document that comes up incorrectly, maybe? I'll check it, but it should be on there. This is what you're seeing too is There's a difference though. The title is little bit (inaudible), Cheryl. (inaudible). We got her number? Okay, the number's on here. I'll check that out and This one that I printed last week was an (inaudible). Okay, moving to the next one. It's a Type 5 to retain the directory listings on the disconnected orders, and this is going to allow the customers to disconnect a loop account and to retain a directory listing from a single LSR, retain those directory listings that will have to remain as an "as is" with no changes on the disconnect, when you disconnect the loop. If you're wanting to disconnect the loop and make changes, then you'll probably still require that you populate or are sending two LSRs for that, and to do this, when you populate the LSR, you're going to populate the ERL or the ELT on the LSOG, call it either a Y or an A, according to your LSOG version. Any questions on that one? The next one we have to do is a flow-through for our auto-rejects, Type 5, and this one is going to be implementing some of the changes for edit changes for edits that we've been using under