Wash. Admin. Code § 480-120-021
The definitions in this section apply throughout the chapter except where there is an alternative definition in a specific section, or where the context clearly requires otherwise.
"Access charge" means a rate charged by a local exchange company to an inter exchange company for the origination, transport, or termination of a call to or from a customer of the local exchange company. Such origination, transport, and termination may be accomplished either through switched access service or through special or dedicated access service.
"Access line" means a circuit providing exchange service between a customer's standard network interface and a serving switching center.
"Affiliate" means an entity that directly or indirectly owns or controls, is owned or controlled by, or is under common ownership or control with, another entity.
"Affiliated interest" means a person or corporation as defined in RCW 80.16.010.
"Ancillary services" means all local service features excluding basic service.
"Applicant" means any person applying to a telecommunications company for new service or reconnection of discontinued service.
"Average busy hour" means a time-consistent hour of the day during which a switch or trunk carries the most traffic. This definition is applied on an individual switch and an individual trunk basis.
"Basic service" means service that includes the following:
* Single-party service;
* Voice grade access to the public switched network;
* Support for local use;
* Dual tone multifrequency signaling (touch-tone);
* Access to emergency services (E911);
* Access to operator services;
* Access to interexchange services;
* Access to directory assistance; and
* Toll limitation services.
"Business" means a for profit or not-for-profit organization, including, but not limited to, corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships, limited liability companies, government agencies, and other entities or associations.
"Business days" means days of the week excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and official state holidays.
"Business office" means an office or service center provided and maintained by a company.
"Business service" means service other than residential service.
"Busy season" means an annual, recurring, and reasonably predictable three-month period of the year when a switch or trunk carries the most traffic. This definition is applied on an individual switch and an individual trunk basis.
"Call aggregator" means any corporation, company, partnership, or person, who, in the ordinary course of its operations, makes telephones available to the public or to users of its premises for telephone calls using a provider of operator services, including, but not limited to, hotels, motels, hospitals, campuses, and pay phones (see also pay phone service providers).
"Category of service" means local, data services such as digital subscriber line service, interexchange, or CMRS. Information about a customer's intraLATA and interLATA primary interexchange carrier freeze status is part of the local category.
"Central office" means a company facility that houses the switching and trunking equipment serving a defined area.
"Centrex" means a telecommunications service providing a customer with direct inward dialing to telephone extensions and direct outward dialing from them.
"Class A company" means a local exchange company with two percent or more of the access lines within the state of Washington. The method of determining whether a company is a Class A company is specified in WAC 480-120-034 (Classification of local exchange companies as Class A or Class B).
"Class B company" means a local exchange company with less than two percent of the access lines within the state of Washington. The method of determining whether a company is a Class B company is specified in WAC 480-120-034 (Classification of local exchange companies as Class A or Class B).
"Commercial mobile radio service (CMRS)" means any mobile (wireless) telecommunications service that is provided for profit that makes interconnected service available to the public or to such classes of eligible users as to be effectively available to a substantial portion of the public.
"Commission (agency)" in a context meaning a state agency, means the Washington utilities and transportation commission.
"Company" means any telecommunications company as defined in RCW 80.04.010.
"Competitively classified company" means a company that is classified as competitive by the commission pursuant to RCW 80.36.320.
"Control" means the possession, direct or indirect, of the power to direct or cause the direction of the management and policies of a company, whether through the ownership of voting shares, by contract, or otherwise.
"Customer" means a person to whom the company is currently providing service.
"Customer premises equipment (CPE)" is equipment located on the customer side of the SNI (other than a company) and used to originate, route, or terminate telecommunications.
"Department" means the department of social and health services.
"Discontinue; discontinuation; discontinued" means the termination or any restriction of service to a customer.
"Drop facilities" means company-supplied wire and equipment placed between a premises and the company distribution plant at the applicant's property line.
"Due date" means the date an action is required to be completed by rule or, when permitted, the date chosen by a company and provided to a customer as the date to complete an action.
"Eligible telecommunications carrier (ETC)" means a carrier designated as an ETC pursuant to 47 U.S.C. Sec. 214 (e).
"Emergency response facility" means fire stations, hospitals, police stations, and state and municipal government emergency operations centers.
"Exchange" means a geographic area established by a company for telecommunications service within that area.
"Extended area service (EAS)" means telephone service extending beyond a customer's exchange, for which the customer may pay an additional flat-rate amount per month.
"Facility or facilities" means lines, conduits, ducts, poles, wires, cables, cross-arms, receivers, transmitters, instruments, machines, appliances, instrumentalities and all devices, real estate, easements, apparatus, property and routes used, operated, owned or controlled by a telecommunications company to facilitate the provision of telecommunications service.
"Force majeure" means natural disasters, including fire, flood, earthquake, windstorm, avalanche, mudslide, and other similar events; acts of war or civil unrest when an emergency has been declared by appropriate governmental officials; acts of civil or military authority; embargoes; epidemics; terrorist acts; riots; insurrections; explosions; and nuclear accidents.
"Interexchange" means telephone calls, traffic, facilities or other items that originate in one exchange and terminate in another.
"Interexchange company" means a company, or division thereof, that provides long distance (toll) service.
"Interoffice facilities" means facilities connecting two or more telephone switching centers.
"InterLATA" is a term used to describe services, revenues, functions, etc., that relate to telecommunications originating in one LATA and terminating outside of the originating LATA.
"IntraLATA" is a term used to describe services, revenues, functions, etc., that relate to telecommunications that originate and terminate within the same LATA.
"Local access and transport area (LATA)" means a local access transport area as defined by the commission in conformance with applicable federal law.
"Local calling area" means one or more rate centers within which a customer can place calls without incurring long-distance (toll) charges.
"Local exchange company (LEC)" means a company providing local exchange telecommunications service.
"Major outages" means a service failure lasting for thirty or more minutes that causes the disruption of local exchange or toll services to more than one thousand customers; total loss of service to a public safety answering point or emergency response agency; intercompany trunks or toll trunks not meeting service requirements for four hours or more and affecting service; or an intermodal link blockage (no dial tone) in excess of five percent for more than one hour in any switch or remote switch.
"Missed commitment" means orders for exchange access lines for which the company does not provide service by the due date.
"Order date" means the date when an applicant requests service unless a company identifies specific actions a customer must first take in order to be in compliance with tariffs or commission rules. Except as provided in WAC 480-120-061 (Refusing service) and 480-120-104 (Information to consumers), when specific actions are required of the applicant, the order date becomes the date those actions have been completed and the applicant notifies the company of that completion unless the company has already installed or activated service.
"Pay phone" or "pay telephone" means any telephone made available to the public on a fee-per-call basis independent of any other commercial transaction. A pay phone or pay telephone includes telephones that are coin-operated or are activated by calling collect or using a calling card.
"Pay phone services" means provision of pay phone equipment to the public for placement of local exchange, interexchange, or operator service calls.
"Pay phone service provider (PSP)" means any corporation, company, partnership, or person who owns or operates and makes pay phones available to the public.
"Payment agency" means a physical location established by a local exchange company, either on its own premises or through a subcontractor, for the purpose of receiving cash and urgent payments from customers.
"Person" means an individual, or an organization such as a firm, partnership, corporation, municipal corporation, agency, association or other entity.
"Prior obligation" means an amount owed to a local exchange company or an interexchange company for regulated services at the time the company physically toll-restricts, interrupts, or discontinues service for nonpayment.
"Proprietary" means owned by a particular person.
"Provision" means supplying telecommunications service to a customer.
"Public access line (PAL)" means an access line equipped with features to detect coins, permit the use of calling cards, and such other features as may be used to provision a pay phone.
"Public safety answering point (PSAP)" means an answering location for enhanced 911 (E911) calls originating in a given area. PSAPs are designated as primary or secondary. Primary PSAPs receive E911 calls directly from the public; secondary PSAPs receive E911 calls only on a transfer or relay basis from the primary PSAP. Secondary PSAPs generally serve as centralized answering locations for a particular type of emergency call.
"Radio communications service company" has the meaning found in RCW 80.04.010, except that for the purposes of this section it includes only those companies providing two-way voice communication as a common carrier.
"Residential service" means basic service to a household.
"Restricted basic service" means either the ability to receive incoming calls, make outgoing calls, or both through voice grade access to the public switched network, including E911 access, but not including other services that are a part of basic service.
"Results of operations" means a fiscal year financial statement concerning regulated operations that include revenues, expenses, taxes, net operating income, and rate base. The rate of return is also included as part of the results of operations. The rate of return is the percentage of net operating income to the rate base.
"Service interruption" means a loss of or impairment of service that is not due to, and is not, a major outage.
"Service provider" means any business that offers a product or service to a customer, the charge for which appears on the customer's telephone bill.
"Special circuit" means an access line specially conditioned to give it characteristics suitable for handling special or unique services.
"Standard network interface (SNI)" means the protector that generally marks the point of interconnection between company communications facilities and customer's terminal equipment, protective apparatus, or wiring at a customer's premises. The network interface or demarcation point is located on the customer's side of the company's protector, or the equivalent thereof in cases where a protector is not employed.
"Station" means a telephone instrument installed for a customer to use for toll and exchange service.
"Subscriber list information (SLI)" means any information:
(a) Identifying the listed names of subscribers of a company and those subscribers' telephone numbers, addresses, or primary advertising classifications (as such classifications are assigned when service is established), or any combination of listed names, numbers, addresses, or classifications; and
(b) That the company or an affiliate has published, caused to be published, or accepted for publication in any directory format.
"Subsidiary" means any company in which the telecommunications company owns directly or indirectly five percent or more of the voting securities, unless the telecommunications company demonstrates it does not have control.
"Support structure" means the trench, pole, or conduit used to provide a path for placement of drop facilities.
"Telecommunications service" means the offering of telecommunications for a fee directly to the public, or to such classes of users to be effectively available directly to the public, regardless of the facilities used.
"Telemarketing" means contacting a person by telephone in an attempt to sell one or more products or services.
"Toll restriction" or "toll restricted" means a service that prevents the use of a local access line to initiate a long distance call using a presubscribed interexchange company.
"Traffic" means telecommunications activity on a telecommunications network, normally used in connection with measurements of capacity of various parts of the network.
"Trouble report" means a report of service affecting network problems reported by customers, and does not include problems on the customer's side of the SNI.
"Trunk" means, in a telecommunications network, a path connecting two switching systems used to establish end-to-end connection. In some circumstances, both of its terminations may be in the same switching system.
Wash. Admin. Code § 480-120-021
Statutory Authority: RCW 80.36.010, 80.36.110, 80.36.320, 80.36.330, 80.36.333, 80.36.338, 80.01.040 and 80.04.160. 07-08-027 (Docket UT-060676, General Order R-540), § 480-120-021, filed 3/27/07, effective 4/27/07. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.01.040 and 80.04.160. 05-03-031 (Docket No. UT 040015, General Order No. R-516), § 480-120-021, filed 1/10/05, effective 2/10/05; 03-01-065 (Docket No. UT-990146, General Order No. R-507), § 480-120-021, filed 12/12/02, effective 7/1/03. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.04.160, 80.36.520 and 80.01.040. 99-02-020 (Order R-452, Docket No. UT-970301), § 480-120-021, filed 12/29/98, effective 1/29/99. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.01.040. 93-06-055 (Order R-384, Docket No. UT-921192), § 480-120-021, filed 2/26/93, effective 3/29/93. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.01.040 and chapter 80.36 RCW. 91-13-078 (Order R-345, Docket No. UT-900726), § 480-120-021, filed 6/18/91, effective 7/19/91. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.01.040 and 1988 c 91. 89-04-044 (Order R-293, Docket No. U-88-1882-R), § 480-120-021, filed 1/31/89. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.01.040. 86-11-009 (Order R-250, Cause No. U-85-58), § 480-120-021, filed 5/12/86, effective 7/31/86. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.01.040 and 1985 c 450. 85-23-001 (Order R-242, Cause No. U-85-56), § 480-120-021, filed 11/7/85. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.04.060. 79-10-060 (Order R-131, Cause No. U-79-42), § 480-120-021, filed 9/18/79. Statutory Authority: RCW 80.36.140. 79-03-031 (Order R-123, Cause No. U-79-01), § 480-120-021, filed 2/28/79; Order R-25, § 480-120-021, filed 5/5/71. Formerly WAC 480-120-030.