The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Bureau) issued a Public Notice reminding communications service providers to submit accurate and complete Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) reports. NORS filings provide the FCC and federal, state, Tribal, and territorial public safety agencies with situational awareness during outages, support the analysis of outage causes and trends, and enable the Bureau to promote implementation of network reliability best practices. The Public Notice urges communications service providers filing in the NORS to: (1) describe the incident clearly and in detail; (2) provide a reasonable estimate of the number of “users affected”; (3) submit NORS reports for outages arising on facilities that are leased or otherwise utilized; and (4) select the most precise root cause supported by the information available. Additionally, the Commission reminded non-facilities-based resellers, including mobile virtual network operators that they must file NORS outage reports.
