Verizon Change Management Meeting Moderator: Susan Pistacchio
October 9, 2007 2:00 pm ET
Coordinator: Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. To ask a question please press star 1. Today’s conference is being recorded. If anyone has any objections you may disconnect at this time.
Now I’ll turn the meeting over to your host for today’s call, Ms. Sue Pistacchio. Ma’am, you may begin.
(Sue Pistacchio): Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. You are on the Verizon CNP call. As the operator has suggested, if you are not speaking if you can please put yourself on mute. I’m going to start off with the roll call.
There’s one thing I would like to ask all of our participants and people when they’re speaking. We have done an audit of some of the transcripts and one of the things that we’re noticing is that a lot of times we’ll have speakers and it’s like woman, man, woman, man.
We would like to make the transcript more meaningful and ask that as people are speaking if you can identify yourself and your company so we have better records of who’s saying what and that can be captured on the transcript.
With that, I’m going to proceed into the roll call. If customers can begin and let me know who’s on the call. Who’s first? Anybody? Can everybody hear me okay?
(Sherry Zheng): (Sherry Zheng) with Neustar.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. (Sherry) with Neustar.
Woman: (Unintelligible) with Neustar.
(Sue Pistacchio): What was that?
Woman: (Unintelligible) with Neustar.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay.
(Lori Ann Burke): This is (Lori Ann Burke) at XO.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi, (Lori Ann).
(Lori Ann Burke): How are you doing, (Sue)?
(Sue Pistacchio): Good.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. I got (Mary). My pen’s running out of ink. I got (Mary). Two pens running out of ink. Oh, no. That’s not a good sign. I didn’t get the person who spoke right after (Mary).
(Shelley): (Shelley) from One Com.
(Sue Pistacchio): Shelley.
(Sandra Boyd): (Sandra Boyd) from HTC Communications.
(Sue Pistacchio): What was your name again?
(Sandra Boyd): (Sandra Boyd).
(Sue Pistacchio): Hey, (Sandra).
(Kelly Stiger): (Kelly Stiger), One Communications.
Woman: Hi, (Sue). This is (unintelligible) from Accenture (Reporting) Service.
(Joy Stewart): (Joy Stewart), Broadview Network.
(Ed Alberto): (Ed Alberto) from Granite Telecommunications.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. That was Granite, right?
(Ed Alberto): Yes.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi, (Eddie). How are you?
(Eddie Mentel): Good. How are you doing?
(Sue Pistacchio): Good.
(Mary): Hi. This is (Mary) from Frontier.
(Sue Pistacchio): (Mary).
(Doc): (Sue), it’s (Doc) from Pen Telecom.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi, (Doc).
(Peggy Rabino): Hi, (Sue). It’s (Peggy Rabino) from Paytech.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hey, (Peggy). Anyone else?
(Angela): Pen Telecom.
(Sue Pistacchio): (Carl).
(Carl Larsen): (Carl Larsen), Wiser.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi, (Carl).
(Woman): Telecom Company.
(Sue Pistacchio): All right.
(Gloria Valiz): (Gloria Valiz), AT&T.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi, (Gloria).
(Gloria Valiz): Hello.
(Carol Frikes): (Carol Frikes), Sprint.
(Sue Pistacchio): (Carol). Anybody else?
(Tina Colessa): (Tina Colessa) from Synchronis Technologies.
(Sue Pistacchio): Synchronis. Anyone else? Okay. This is who I’ve captured. I have AT&T Local. I have Broadview, Echelon, Frontier, Granite, HTC, Integra, Neustar, One Communications, Paytech, Telecom, Sprint, Synchonis, Wiser and XO. Did I forget anybody?
Woman: Accenture.
(Sue Pistacchio): Accenture. You know, and the thing is, I know that you’re on my list and I’m looking saying where did I put them. Okay. Here we go. Accenture right up on top.
Man: We haven’t heard from…
(Sue Pistacchio): I’m having difficulties with my pen. I apologize. All right. So I’ve got everybody else?
(Sam Caldwell): (Sue), this is (Sam Caldwell). I’m on.
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi, (Sam). How are you?
(Sam Caldwell): I’m doing very well. Thank you.
(Sue Pistacchio): Good. Okay. We’re going to get started, go back to the agenda. As I said before if you have something interesting to say just please identify yourselves and that way our transcripts can be more meaningful.
I’m going to start with the departmental update. I’ll begin with CTE. October testing is in progress and (Joann) (unintelligible) advises that west testing must be completed by this Thursday and the release goes out into production this weekend. And the east is scheduled for next weekend.
And, (Joann), I think you said that as of right now everything is smooth sailing. Anything else you need to inform us of, (Joann)?
(Joann): No. That’s it, (Sue).
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. Does anybody have any questions for (Joann) with CTE? Okay. For PSCC we have everything functioning as it should be. Everything is in optimal condition. Does anybody have any questions for PSCC? Okay.
From a Web perspective normally I identify some of the items that have gone out from a local perspective. We did do some Web enhancements this month but none of them were specifics of the local side. I know, (Eddie), you had some comments looking for some enhancements that you were looking for and I know I did relay that back.
The PSCC and I checked and we know that your enhancements had already been processed last month. Did you get all your – is that closed with you, (Eddie), or did you have any other questions?
(Eddie Mentel): Yeah. I was actually speaking with (Tom Scanlan) via email and it looks like we’re all set.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. That’s good to hear. Does anybody have any other questions related to Web enhancements?
And I have one other thing to note from a departmental update point of view and it’s related to notification. This is something we’ve been covering more with the CUFF meetings but everybody on this distribution got a notice – I believe it was last week – to ask if you wanted to sign up for the network event notices.
And I would ask that if you’re interested in that if you could just follow the directions to sign up for those notices. As I said we have covered it on the CUFF but maybe not everybody participates in CUFF as well. Does anybody have any questions related to those, what the network event notices are? All right.
(Shelley Pascal): Hey, (Sue). This is (Shelley Pascal). I just had a quick question. Once you sign up do you have any idea how long before it becomes effective? Like I picked specific regions but I’m still getting the notices across the entire footprint.
(Sue Pistacchio): Were you part of the trial?
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. My understanding was they were going to change it over this week. They sent a separate trial notice asking you to specify the region. Did you –
(Shelley Pascal): I did that.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. I would say it’s going to get done some time this week.
(Shelley Pascal): Okay. Thank you.
(Sue Pistacchio): Yeah. We’ve gotten hundreds of notices so it’s probably going to take more than a few days to clean them out. I would say that it should definitely be done some time this week. You know, I’ll have that team look specifically at your email and have them switch it over as soon as possible.
(Shelley Pascal): Okay. Not a big issue. I wasn’t sure how long before the revision went into effect.
(Sue Pistacchio): You should see it some time this week.
(Shelley Pascal): Okay. Thank you.
(Sue Pistacchio): Any other questions on the network event and notifications? Okay. We can jump into the items by release. On Page 1 just want to notify that the non-design serial format change has been completed for all jurisdictions. So New England, New York and (unintelligible) have all been completed and we are now tracking that initiative as completed. Is there any questions on that one?
For item number 4 and (Mike Clancy) did send a note to us to advise that he was not going to be in today. So this is a Type 5 initiative. It’s something that
we have been working with (Mike Clancy). (Bobbie Dodson) is going to explain the changes but (Mike) isn’t here today just to give his feedback. If it’s something people feel a need we can definitely cover it next month. (Bobbie)?
(Bobbie Dodson): Thank you, (Sue). Yes. This one we have is a candidate for the February 2008 release and it’s for CO22290, line station transfer. As (Sue) stated this is a Type 5. There are some changes to what you see on here and I’ll go over and point out the changes on here.
This is an east and a west initiative, not just an east one. And basically today the license performs line station transfers for digital loop requests and those line station transfers is determined during our provisioning process and once the order’s been submitted then we do not bill the customer what those appropriate line station transfers charges are.
We’re going to modify the current process that we have today and what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be identifying the customer when there is line station transfers needed, the pre-order process.
And we’re going to be doing that by allowing you to go out there and use either the - in the west it would be the loop qual and in the east it’s going to be the XDSL loop qual pre-order transaction.
We’re going to be adding a new field onto that and that new field is the LLSTFR field and that stands for line station transfer. And what will happen is if we believe that there is going to be a line station transfer coming back you will receive a Y for yes or a N for no.
Now the Y for yes means that they’re may be a charge that might be applied and we might have to be doing a line station transfer. The reason that’s a may be even though it says yes and that’s because we won’t know absolutely for sure until the technician goes out into the field. We believe that there probably will be but until that technician actually gets out there we will not have a 100% sure on that.
Now, from a billing perspective, what will happen is once that technician actually goes out there and we do determine that a line station transfer will be required then we will be putting a non-recurring charge on the bill itself and then again this non-recurring charge is added as per part of the interconnection agreements where the line station transfer needs to be performed in order to provide the facilities that are needed for that digital loop request.
And, again, this is going to impact the order and pre-order processes. This does apply to all the Verizon jurisdictions and the areas that are going to be impacted again are going to be all of the digital loops.
We are currently still working on the requirements for this so I don’t have anymore detailed level information that I can provide at this time. I’ll possibly will have a little bit more information at the next meeting. So if, (Sue), you would like for me to go over that again next month I might have a little bit more detail on exactly the level of digital loops that we would be covering.
(Sue Pistacchio): All right.
(Bobbie Dodson): Is there any questions that I can answer for anyone?
(Bobbie Dodson): You’re welcome.
(Sue Pistacchio): Does anybody have any questions with items on the items by release? All right. We’re going to move on to the PWG, the prioritization documentation and as a recap of last month we did note we did do an audit of a lot of our old Type 4 requests and we did withdraw many Type 4 requests that we are no longer moving ahead with.
In addition to that we had an agreement made on how we were going to move forward with the Type 5 ongoing and it was an agreement to have bi-weekly Type 5 review sessions where we could go through and really drill down, reaffirm our understanding of what the Type 5 is, really have a fluent discussion on where Verizon is in perspective of each Type 5 request.
Last week we did send out the documentation for the first batch of Type 5s that we were going to review. Originally we had said that we would do 10 but we decided that we would do the first 15 since many of them are in deny status. I actually went down to 16 when one of them got withdrawn and then subsequent to that another one got withdrawn but we are going to be going up to item 16.
One of the things, I know (Beth) (unintelligible) wanted to say something about kind of her vision for the meetings starting tomorrow and I know one of the other things, (Beth), I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about the potential re-ranking.
(Beth): I can do it on this call or we can do it on the call tomorrow but I just – one of the thoughts just in being new to the group and in listening to everybody’s comments as we went through, you know, just where we were with some of the Type 5s and the fact that there has not been a lot of discussion and/or
movement this year with the Type 5s, you know, because of other work that’s been going on. I was just, myself, as we went through them A, trying to understand some of them better and then, B, you know, saying, okay, if there are ones that are more important because of the way the processes are set up today if something came in, in 2002 and everybody voted on and it was the most important thing it stays as the most important and anything that’s come in subsequent to that that may be as important but is newer will always be lower in the ranking.
So I was just thinking two things. One is for when we go through these initiatives tomorrow we start to really dig in and get a better understanding in how they apply in today’s world for us to A, put aside the fact that wherever they were ranked before and then just hold it in our mind and feel that this is still something yes, important or no, not important to move forward.
And when we get to all of the 80 that we have some of them have, you know, been withdrawn and we’ll go through all of that. But when we get through the list then know the ones that we say, yeah, these are still ones that we still want to talk about and at that point, you know, I would want to propose well maybe we do re-rank them and have that as an official ranking.
Because I think right now we have the list of the ones that have come in from the very beginning on and then we have what’s affectionately known as the (Clancy) list which I believe was an attempt to rank the east changes about a year and a half ago and then we have the west now merged in and I’m just thinking maybe this might be an appropriate time at the end of our complete review to maybe really have a discussion about how we should move forward with these.
(Beth): So I don’t think it’s something we all have to vote on now. I just wanted to ask everyone to give it some consideration and thought so that as we go through the process that we’re going to begin tomorrow we really say is this something, you know, that’s important for your business and if it is we’ll just keep it in. At this point it’s important and then we can have a discussion, oh, these are so all important, what do we do with these now?
That’s really been the discussion that I’ve had with (Sue) because I’ve seen a number of them that look really similar or maybe trying to get at the same thing or things of that nature.
I just think as we go through just like I found as I’ve been digging in with (Sue) on the team to really understand and get a better sense of what we think they need and some of the history on them, you know, the question comes up on my mind is this something really important or not.
So that was just something important I wanted to share and then bring out there to the team so that maybe we can think about it tomorrow when we meet.
(Sue Pistacchio): And the thing is, does anybody have any questions on what we’re doing tomorrow because I would rather talk about it here because I think we have a lot of spare time on the agenda so that tomorrow we can really jump in and start with the first Type 5.
Does everybody feel comfortable with what we’re doing? Does anybody have any questions on what we’re doing starting tomorrow?
(Eddie Mentel): Actually, this is (Eddie) from Granite. Are we looking first at the migration ones? I was a little confused by the email.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. No. What we’re looking at first is the first 16. So we’re going 1 through 16. The two that we’re not covering in that grouping I believe are 4 and 5. And this is – we did agree last month that we were just going to go completely in sequence but then when we started to look at the migration on Type 5 there’s some overlap.
I think a lot of it is what is this Type 5 doing as opposed to this one. So I know this was an exercise that we did before. I think it was in the end of 2003 time frame.
(Eddie Mentel): Right.
(Sue Pistacchio): We did implement a lot of the migration scenarios and a lot of cases we may have implemented pieces of a Type 5 but not the whole thing. So I just think the most efficient thing to do is to look at the migration scenarios together.
Why we put that in the second meeting is when we left last month we told people we’re going to start at number 1 and do to 15. So we thought that people might have already started to do their investigations so we wanted to keep with that.
So what is on the agenda for tomorrow is items 1 thought 16. That’s based on the official CNP ranking with the exception of any migration scenarios. And the expectation is at the next meeting which will be October 24 we will go over the migration scenarios.
And one of the things that we’ll ask the customers is if there’s any other groupings that people think will be beneficial just certain on Type 5s that it makes sense to talk about together we will do that.
So that’s pretty much covered everything that I wanted. Again, you know, once we get all of the Type 5s that we’ve talked about them and an idea of where we are to really go through them and re-rank them so we really understand what is your number one request now, you know, not something that maybe was put in six or seven years ago but looking at where we are as an industry right now, what is the appropriate ranking. That’s something that we would really like to do.
Does anybody have any other questions or comments regarding what we’re going to start doing tomorrow?
(Eddie Mentel): One, I think it would be great if we could re-rank everything as we go through it. What if we come across an issue that, you know, does not participate in the CNP anymore but one of us still in the (unintelligible) community still wants to take over that take the initiative for that change request? Can we talk about that?
(Sue Pistacchio): You can. I know one of the things that we have done for the call tomorrow, There are customers that participate in all the CNP meetings and if you are a regular participant we didn’t reach out to you because we’re kind of assuming you’ll be there.
For those that are in the first stack, if it’s a customer that doesn’t normally join change management we have reached out to them. There was one Type 5 request that’s on the list where there’s been some changes with the people that
have joined. So in all cases we’ve made an effort to make sure that there’s somebody to speak to, that Type 5 request starts, you know, at each call.
But, yeah, it is part of the process that if there’s a Type 5 and the originator is long gone but it’s something that the industry does have a need in we can definitely make a change of ownership if that customer is not there to speak to the Type 5. So that is something we can entertain.
(Eddie Mentel): Thank you.
(Sue Pistacchio): Are there any other questions? Okay. So I think we’re going to have a good meeting tomorrow and we’ll get started on those and it will be a lot of fun.
When it comes to new business from a Type 5 perspective as part of this we did manage to get not one, but two Type 5s withdrawn. One isn’t listed here because it’s something that we identified after all of the documentation last night went out. I’m sorry, not last night, last week. Excuse me.
On the first one is C040785 notification process for jeopardys. That was withdrawn. That was Kim. Right? Am I getting that right/
(Kim): Yes.
(Sue Pistacchio): That was without notes. It’s just memory, (Kim).
(Kim): Very good.
(Sue Pistacchio): And we just, you know, again, this is part of us just looking at the initiatives and part of us cleaning it out and saying wait a minute, we think we do this already and agreed and we withdrew that.
Another one we were trying to get ownership for which is not listed here, it’s C040350. This is ability to download historical customer information from Ys. And in the history what was noted in the CNP or the PWG documentation, there were only two customers that voted on this and there was actually some notes in the official document that there was an expectation that would be costly and it would be.
So we kind of wondered if it was still needed. It was old Type 5 and it was listed with FDC. So this was a case where we tracked it down to find who would be the appropriate customer who would take ownership for it and (Carrie Manser) did take it and investigated it and did advise mid last week that AT&T no longer had a need for that Type 5 change request.
So that is another one that has been withdrawn. If it’s not documented here we’ll put it in the wrap up documentation for this month. And it is still showing on the agenda for tomorrow. So we will also talk about it with (unintelligible) tomorrow as well.
Does anyone have any questions on the withdrawals? All right. With that being said I have no other business items that need to be discussed from change management perspective. Does anybody have any other business items that they need to bring to the agenda?
Well, with that I think we can adjourn. And, again, the call tomorrow, we will have a transcript for it so we will have a history of what is being discussed as a Type 5. Again, try to join a few minutes beforehand so we don’t have too many folks on hold. And with that I believe we can adjourn for the day.
(Gloria Valiz): (Sue), this is (Gloria Valiz).
(Sue Pistacchio): Hi.
(Gloria Valiz): Hi. I just remembered seeing some time last week some notification about some changes that you’re making in December. Are you planning on having a call, a release overview?
(Sue Pistacchio): A release overview? (Bobbie), you’re doing a release overview. Right?
(Bobbie Dodson): Yes. We are.
(Gloria Valiz): Do you have an idea of when you might be doing?
(Bobbie Dodson): The release overview? Well, I did just get word today so we’re going to be sending out a notice that it’s saying that we are pulling the west changes so we want be having a release overview for west. We’re going to be pulling that information. So we’re working on that right now. So the west is gone.
We’re working on the east one. We’ll be doing that after the 66 day notice goes out just like we would with any other normal release that we would be doing. Let me look and see what date we would normally be doing that.
(Gloria Valiz): So I didn’t get a chance to go look at the data so do you have the – I thought I saw something in business rules the other day and I just don’t remember.
(Gloria Valiz): But do you have any – you’re pulling whatever you’ve sent out for the west. Okay. So the west is going to not happen. Do you have any material that’s out there right now for the east?
(Bobbie Dodson: Yes. We do. They went out at 73 days. So it went out on October the 4.
(Sue Pistacchio): (Bobbie), do you have that notice?
(Bobbie Dodson): I’m pretty sure I do.
(Sue Pistacchio): Okay. If you don’t I’ll resend it to you.
(Bobbie Dodson): And the 66 day notice should be going out tomorrow. Okay. So you might be planning a notification with you probably the following week. Probably around the 18th.
(Gloria Valiz): Okay. So somewhere around the 18th is when you might be having this call?
(Bobbie Dodson): Yes.
Woman: I’m sorry. This is (unintelligible). For the west December will withdrawn. You will not implement the December release at all?
(Bobbie Dodson): Well, when you say at all we will have a December release but not the –
Woman: Not the business rule. You would post it.
(Bobbie Dodson): That is correct.
(Bobbie Dodson): That is correct.
(Gloria Valiz): And you’re not doing anything in November. Right?
(Bobbie Dodson): No.
(Gloria Valiz): Okay. Thank you.
Woman: (Sue), this is (unintelligible) from Accenture Reporting Service. Just a quick question regarding the December release. Can you please tell me the outcall number for the west?
(Sue Pistacchio): It’s 9.
Woman: 99?
(Sue Pistacchio): Yeah. We all do 9. It’s 9 everywhere.
Woman: And for the February, ’08?
(Sue Pistacchio): Yeah?
Woman: Is it going to change?
(Sue Pistacchio): It’s 9 as well.
Woman: Oh, okay. It’s not going to be 10?
Woman: Thank you.
(Sue Pistacchio): Any other questions related to release? Any other questions from any of the customers? All right. I think we’re good to wrap this time. Everybody have a good day.
Woman: Thank you.
Woman: Thank you.
