Wholesale: Products & Services

Open Product/Process CR PC102303-1 Detail

Description Of Change

Expected deliverables. Qwest will add the maximum of 10,000 lines to each of our summary BANs before opening new ones.

Project Meetings

4/21/04 April CMP Meeting Sue Kriebel, Qwest stated all the work is complete on this CR and asked if it could be closed. Liz Blavin, MCI pointed out that the limit is actually 6,000 instead of 10,000 as stated in the title. Bonnie Johnson, Eschelon asked if there was a way to determine each CLEC volume separately and set different limits for each. She stated the object would be to set the volume based on the average number of orders a CLEC has in process (or in flight) at any one time. For instance some CLECs would never have 4,000 orders in flight and therefore could be given a higher limit than 6,000. Sue said it is now a manual monitoring process which she hopes at some point to mechanize. Bonnie asked if mechanization would be to count the order when it comes in. Sue said yes. Liz verified that the concept was to have the in flight orders counted in determining the ceiling and still not exceed 10,000. Sue said she would look into this. This CR will stay in CLEC Test.

-- 03/17/04 March CMP Meeting Doug Andreen, Qwest reported that the PCAT moving the limit from 2,000 to 6,000 lines will be effective tomorrow 3/18. This CR will be moved to CLEC Test status.

-- 2/18/04 CMP Meeting Sue Kriebel, Qwest said that an MCC notice has been issued to the centers reinforcing the minimum three day notice that Qwest must give the CLECs before opening a new BAN. Further, the PCAT covering the 6,000 limit per BAN will be published 3/18. This CR will stay in Development.

1/21/04 January CMP Meeting Sue Kriebel, Qwest answered three action items from the last meeting. First she explained that the 6,000 cap on BANs refers to sub-accounts and that there can be many lines under a sub-account. Second, there is only one active BAN at a time and that re-activating an account is a manual process. If a BAN is re-activated there will still be only one active BAN. Lastly, regarding the minimal time to notify a CLEC of a new BAN, she will send out notification to reinforce this standard. Sue also said PCAT changes would be forthcoming on the new 6,000 limit. Carla Pardee, AT&T said that she thought CLECs would be notified when they are getting close to exhausting a BAN. Sue agreed but said this is the notification of a new BAN being activated. Connie Winston, Qwest added that the BAN takes into account the RSID, product and state. The CR will move to Development status.

- 12/17/03 December CMP Meeting Sue Kriebel, Qwest reviewed the draft response increasing the lines per BAN to 6,000 from 2,000 without an increase to the current notification interval to open a new BAN. Liz Balvin, MCI clarified the existing process of when a BAN is close to the maximum that Qwest send a email to the CLEC with three days notice to open a new BAN. Carla Pardee, AT&T stated they have been getting one day notice. She further stated that 6,000 is better than 2,000 and she would accept the response but that it is really not acceptable when dealing with large volumes. Sue said she would clarify the process to ensure three day notice. Sue explained that if we use the 6,000 limit by the time the BAN is closed we could have and have had 2,000 to 3,000 additions processed. Carla noted that AT&T has accounts that have exceeded the limit but have not been noticed. Sue explained that it depends on the type of product for instance UNE-L carries less processing risk than UNE-P because usage is on the UNE-P which makes it more complex. Kathy Stichter of Eschelon said she was ok with the 6,000 limit and that the time span was not an issue at Eschelon. Kathy asked what the difference was between a line and a sub-account? Sue took this as an action item. Later in the meeting Kathy asked if BANs previously closed that had less than 6000 lines could be re-opened. Sue Kriebel said she would investigate. The CR status was moved to Evaluation.

- 11/19/03 Nov. CMP Meeting Kathy Stichter - Eschelon presented this CR to increase the lines billed on Summary BANs from 2,000 to 10,000. She stated that each time a new BAN is opened Eschelon reviews, reconciles and handles dispute resolutions separately. Carla Pardee AT&T added that AT&T supports this CR. Liz Balvin - MCI said that MCI had submitted a CR sometime ago for this and it was denied. Liz stated she would like to see no limit on BANs, but that 10,000 is better than 2,000. Also, she has just submitted a similar CR requesting multiple BANs per product per state. Doug said the same SMEs will be looking at both CRs. Kathy stated she has 20 BANs in Minnesota for Resale alone and is trying to consolidate these. Carla added that the 2,000 restriction on BANs seems to be just recently enforced by Qwest. She has several that are over 2,000 lines and it never seemed to be a problem. Kathy agreed that it was not being enforced before. This CR will move to Presented status.

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Clarification Meeting: 3:00 p.m. (MDT) / Monday November 3, 2003

1-877-521-8688 1456160# PC102303-1 10,000 lines billed on Summary BANs before opening a new Summary BAN.

Attendees: Name/Company: Carla Pardee, AT&T Kathy Stichter, Eschelon Doug Andreen, Qwest Kerri Waldner, Qwest Brenda Kerr, Qwest Cindy Macy, Qwest Wendy Thurnau, Qwest Paul Johnson, Qwest Anne Robberson, Qwest Lynn Loftus, Qwest

Introduction of participants on the conference call was made and the purpose of the call discussed.

Review Requested Description of Change: Doug read the CR description: Currently, Qwest caps the number of lines billed on a Summary BAN at 2,500. Then it will close the existing BAN and open a new BAN. Eschelon processes each BAN separately for reconciliation, dispute and payment. For each Summary BAN Eschelon completes several tasks. Each new Summary BAN means we must duplicate these tasks, which is extremely time consuming. Eschelon asks Qwest to allow 10,000 lines per Summary BAN. Also Qwest needs to provide more than 30 days notice before opening a new Summary BAN.

Kathy Stichter - Eschelon said that entire process is extremely time consuming on the Eschelon side each time a new BAN is utilized.

Carla Pardee – AT&T added that AT&T had been informed on short notice that they would have to close the existing BAN and begin using a new BAN.

Anne Robberson - Qwest said she believed that the limit on BANs was a system restriction. She also stated that the limit is 2000 lines per BAN.

Kathy and Carla both stated that they did not believe this to be true since they both have existing BANs with many more lines than 2,500.

Kathy said that the number of BANs that are opened directly multiplies the process.

Carla stated she was notified a week ago by Qwest’s billing department that they were exhausting BAN numbers.

Kathy said she has 69 BANs for CRIS alone. She said ideally she would like to see one BAN per state and that she would like to see 45 if not 60 days notice given before opening new BANs.

Kerri Waldner - Qwest asked Kathy if she had any trends on how fast BANs were being exhausted. Kathy responded that she did not.

Kathy added that a third issue (along with 1. The 2000 limit and 2. Insufficient advanced notification) is that it seems Qwest is just starting to enforce the line limit on BANs

Confirm Areas & Products Impacted Resale, Unbundled Loop, UNE Loop, UNE-P, EEL (UNE-C)

Confirm Right Personnel Involved Correct personnel were involved in the meeting.

Identify/Confirm CLEC’s Expectation Identified on initial CR: Allow 10,000 lines billed on Summary BANs before opening a new Summary BAN. Identified during call: Eschelon needs 45 to 60 days’ notice before opening a new summary BAN.

Identify any Dependent Systems Change Requests Eschelon would like the change applied to both CRIS and IABS.

Establish Action Plan (Resolution Time Frame) Kathy will present for Eschelon at the November CMP meeting.

CenturyLink Response

December 02, 2003

For Review by the CLEC Community and Discussion at the December 17, 2003 CMP Meeting

Kathy Stichter Senior Invoice Validation Analyst Eschelon Telecom

SUBJECT: Qwest Change Request Response - CR # PC102303-1 10,000 Lines billed on Summary BANs before opening a new Summary BAN

After reviewing CR # PC102303-1, Qwest has determined that it will raise the current standard of 2,000 Sub Accounts per Summary BAN to 6,000 Sub Accounts per Summary BAN. This is a business decision that was made that is sensitive to the request from the CLEC community to increase the size of the Sub Accounts per Summary BAN, but is also sensitive to the Qwest Billing SDC’s who have to manage the Summary Accounts.

As to the second issue of requesting a 30 day notification prior to closing a Summary BAN cannot be accommodated. Once the Summary BAN has reached the 6,000 Sub Account limit, it will be closed and a new Summary BAN issued as is currently done. To continue to leave the Summary Account open for an additional 30 days to notify the CLEC after it has reached the Sub Account limit would continue to increase the number of Sub Accounts posting to the Summary BAN to an unacceptable level before it could be closed. Sincerely, Carl Sear Sr. Process Analyst Qwest Communications