1. Analysis of Network Outage Reports
Cybersecurity and Communications Reliability Division – Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau
John Healy
December 2017

2. Data Source Database snapshot as of November 9, 2017
NORS Final Outage Reports through September 2017 were used in the analysis

3. Frequency of Outages by Month
Monthly Trend 1.2%
(down from 1.6%)

4. 3Q17 Hurricane Outage Reports
“Hurricane” cited in outage report text fields
July (1), August (45), September (279)

5. Outage Index – For All Outages Except DS3-Simplex
See ATIS Analysis of FCC-Reportable Service Outage Data for a description of the method used to calculate the outage index.

6. Planned Maintenance
Monthly Trend
5.4%
(up from 4.8%)

7. DS3 (Non-Simplex) Events
Monthly Trend 1.3%
(down from 1.8%)

8. Big DS3 Outages

9. Big DS3 Outages
Monthly Trend 1.6%
(down from 2.1%)

10. DS3-Simplex
Monthly Trend 1.3%
(down from 1.9%)

11. Fiber Cut
Monthly Trend
flat 0% (down from 0.6%)

12. E911
Monthly Trend 0.5%
(down from 1.0%)

13. Very Large E911 Outages
Monthly Trend
flat 0%
(unchanged)

14. E911 – Phase 2 Events
Monthly Trend 2.5%
(up from 2.4%)

15. Wireline
Monthly Trend
flat 0%
(unchanged)
Wireline outages are all outages for which the Reason Reportable was at least 900,000 wireline user-minutes.

16. Wireless
Monthly Trend
0.9%
(unchanged)

17. Monthly Trend 6.0% (down from 6.1%)
VoIP
Monthly Trend 6.0% (down from 6.1%)

18. Environmental – External
Monthly Trend 0.4% (down from 1.2%)

19. SS7
Monthly Trend -2.2%
(up from -2.3%)

20. Malicious Events
Monthly Trend -3.4%
(down from -2.3%)

21. Malicious Activity
The figures for 2017 are through September.

22. Hardware Failure
Monthly Trend 1.3%
(down from 1.6%)

23. Power Failure
Monthly Trend 0.6%
(down from 1.9%)

24. Diversity Failure
Monthly Trend 0.7%
(down from 1.8%)

25. Duration Trends: DS3 Non-Simplex
The duration of DS3 Non-Simplex outages has decreased from 2016 to 2017 (statistically significant using a Mann-Whitney test).

26. Duration Trends: E911
The duration of E911 outages is statistically unchanged in 2017 compared with 2016 (using a Mann-Whitney test). 7

27. Duration Trends: Wireline
The duration of wireline outages is statistically unchanged in 2017 compared with 2016 (using a Mann-Whitney test).

28. Duration Trends: Wireless
The duration of wireless outages is statistically unchanged in 2017 compared with 2016 (using a Mann-Whitney test).

29. Duration Trends: DS3 Simplex
The duration of DS3 Simplex outages is statistically unchanged in 2017 compared with 2016 (using a Mann-Whitney test).

30. Duration Trends: VoIP
The duration of VoIP outages has increased from 2016 to 2017 (statistically significant using a Mann-Whitney test).

31. Duration Trends: Other Special Facilities
The duration of other special facilities outages is statistically unchanged from 2016 to 2017 (using a Mann-Whitney test). 6

32. Test for Trend in Event Duration
Non-DS3-Simplex Outages
Data from 10/2014 thru 9/2017
DS3-Simplex Events Only
Data from 10/2014 thru 9/2017
Rank Correlation of duration with date is and is significant at the level
Rank Correlation of duration with date is .060 and is significant at the level
Conclusion: Durations of Non-DS3-Simplex Outages have shortened over the period from 10/2014 to 9/2017.
Conclusion: Durations of DS3-Simplex Events have lengthened over the period from 10/2014 to 9/2017.

33. NORS Transition
March 6, 2017 – Moved to the production version of NORS 3.0 on ServiceNow platform
Monthly NORS Coordinators Meetings
NORS User Manual
NRSC suggestions pending
DS3 Simplex threshold change
Going from DS3s to OC3s