6609.14,90 Page 1 of 4 FSH 6609.14 - TELECOMMUNICATIONS HANDBOOK WO AMENDMENT 6609.14-95-1 EFFECTIVE 5/26/95 CHAPTER 90 - FEDERAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM 2000 (FTS2000) 90.3 - Policy. FTS2000 is the General Services Administration (GSA) Government-wide long distance telecommunications network. Use American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Network A services offered under the FTS2000 contract. The services provided by the contract include voice, data, and video for the continental United States, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. 90.4 - Responsibility. It is the responsibility of Designated Agency Representatives to: 1. Prepare FTS2000 requests for services or features. 2. Ensure that the information on the form is accurate. 3. Submit the requests on a timely basis. 91 - SERVICE ORDER PROCESS. Submit requests for services or features electronically, on the appropriate forms, directly to the AT&T FTS2000 Service Support Center. Send an electronic or facsimile copy to the AT&T FTS2000 Customer Service Center representative responsible for the Forest Service requests. This should facilitate tracking of the request and timely delivery of the service. Contact the Washington Office, Information Systems and Technology Staff, Customer Services Branch, Designated Agency Representative, for a copy of the necessary forms. 92 - SWITCHED VOICE SERVICES. 1. The Federal Calling Card may be used by employees when they are away from their office to place authorized calls. See FSH 6509.33 for additional information regarding the use of the Federal Calling Card when in travel status. 2. Toll free (800) numbers are available from the FTS2000 contract. These numbers may be used in one of the following configurations: a. Direct Inward Station Access (DISA) allows toll free inward access to a station (a specific telephone) on the premise. For example, this 800 number can be used by the public for the purpose of providing recreation information, or ranger districts contacting the supervisor's office to conduct business. b. DISA is associated with an automated attendant arrangement where the caller is prompted to enter one of several digits to be routed to a specific department. For example, the caller may be asked to press 2 if they want to speak to someone concerning campgrounds or 3 if they want information concerning employment opportunities. c. DISA allows a caller to control routing of calls into and then out of the called system. Although an 800 number may be installed for this purpose, obtain technical approval prior to implementation. See section 22.2 for additional direction and section 25, exhibit 01, for applicable approval levels. 93 - VIRTUAL ON-NET SERVICES. Locations not served by an Equal Access End Office and not currently using an FTS2000 service may continue to obtain long distance telephone service via existing service arrangements without obtaining an exception to the use of FTS2000. If a location in this category now uses an alternate FTS2000 service (such as Direct, Single Station, or Federal Calling Card access), a request for exception must be submitted through the Washington Office, Information Systems and Technology Staff, Customer Services Branch, to the General Services Administration prior to implementation of the non-FTS2000 service. Only the GSA has the authority to approval the request for an exception. 94 - PACKET SWITCHED SERVICES. 94.1 - FTS2000 Mail. There are few instances when FTS2000 Mail IDs are required by a Forest Service employee. Requests should be carefully reviewed by the Designated Agency Representatives (DAR). For electronic mail with non-DG users, go through the X.400 gateway. Contact the unit's FTS2000 Designated Agency Representative or systems management personnel for further information. 94.2 - Packet Dial-up IDs. These asynchronous IDs allow users toll free access to their home systems when they are away from the office. 95 - ACCEPTANCE. Assume that the FTS2000 service is accepted on the delivery date unless the Designated Agency Representative (DAR) provides a rejection of service notice to the General Services Administration (GSA) Service Oversight Center. The delivery date is provided to GSA by FTS2000. For a copy of the Acceptance/Rejection form, contact the unit's DAR. 96 - TROUBLE HANDLING AND ESCALATION PROCEDURES. 1. The nature of the trouble and how critical it is must be determined. 2. Switched voice, packet, and data transmission (including FTSMail) service trouble should be referred to the FTS2000 Network Control Center (NCC) after checking customer provided equipment (CPE), and clearing it of trouble. The NCC assigns a trouble ticket number for tracking purposes. 3. The NCC isolates the trouble and refers it to the appropriate access provider or to their internal work group for clearance. Provide as much information as possible including, though not limited to: a. Contact names and complete telephone numbers including the area code or assigned FTS2000 700 prefix, b. Telephone number(s) involved, c. Circuit numbers, d. Service Delivery Point (SDP) ID, e. Packet Switched Service (PSS) Network Termination Number (NTN), and f. Type of service (such as Switched Digital Integrated Service (SDIS). 4. FTS2000 reports the status to the customer contact listed on the trouble ticket. Provide at least two contact names and their telephone numbers to minimize telephone tag and delayed communication. 5. The NCC should be called if an acknowledgement of the report is not received within 1 hour. Identify the assigned trouble ticket number, explain that a call from the technician has not been received within 1 hour, and ask for a status report. 6. The NCC should be called again if a call from the technician is not received within 30 minutes. Identify the assigned trouble ticket number and request that the report be escalated to the first level supervisor. 7. These escalation guidelines should be followed if an unsatisfactory response to the requests has occurred. a. Escalate to the first level supervisor at the AT&T FTS2000 NCC when the reported trouble has not been resolved in a reasonable amount of time or regular or satisfactory status reports are not provided. b. Escalate to the AT&T FTS2000 Service Manager when a total out of service condition exists, escalation to the NCC first level supervisor has been required, or resolution of the reported trouble does not meet reasonable expectations. c. Escalate to the Region, Station, Area, or Institute DAR who may then elevate the situation to a DAR in the Washington Office, Information Systems and Technology Staff. 8. The established timeframes should be observed. The intervals are based on the time the trouble is reported: a. At 1-1/2 to 3 hours, escalate to the first level supervisor responsible for the service for which the trouble has been reported. b. At 4 hours, escalate to the second level. c. At 6 hours, escalate to the District Manager. d. At 8 hours, escalate to the Service Operations Director. 9. The applications which are "Mission Critical," should be escalated at an earlier point in the outage than described by the guidelines in paragraph 8. 97 - BILLING HIERARCHY. A comprehensive billing hierarchy has been established for the purpose of providing hierarchy-based billing to the unit level. The USDA provides monthly FTS2000 unit and summary reports to designated personnel at the Region, Station, Area, and Institute. Implement hierarchy-based billing except at locations served by GSA consolidated local service without Automatic Number Identification (ANI) or where shared tenant arrangements exist. Offices whose access to FTS2000 is provided by a non-ANI GSA arrangement are billed based on a formula developed by the GSA. Since the formula is based on an agency's percentage of lines for that location, provide close coordination with the local GSA Telecommunication Manager. At a Forest Service-exclusive use location, which provides shared tenant arrangements to other Forest Service offices and/or non- Forest Service agencies, the primary Forest Service tenant receives the bill and distributes the costs.