Dominant Service Providers offering or providing interconnection services shall designate a Services Manager to deal with other Service Providers requiring interconnection and other services. The role of the Services Manager is to facilitate communication between Service Providers on commercial and technical aspects of interconnection and the provision of other services to Service Providers.

Dominant Service Providers should agree to meetings with other Service Providers within five (5) working days of the meetings being formally requested.

Interconnected Service Providers should establish a joint technical and operational committee. The joint technical and operational committee should facilitate discussion to reach mutually acceptable agreements on technical, operational, planning, billing and other service aspects of interconnection.

The composition of the joint technical and operational committee should be agreed upon by the Service Providers and could be reconstituted as and when required.

The joint technical and operational committee should meet at regular intervals with an agenda agreed in advance and may cover one or more of the following areas:

New Points of Interconnection 

Analysis of traffic levels 

Service quality 

Capacity requirements 

Fault analysis 

Billing processes 

Network and/or service changes 

Any other technical and operational issues associated with interconnection 

Service Providers should establish working groups of project managers, operational staff and technical personnel where required to address specific issues as they arise.

7.3.1 Network information

A Dominant Service Provider offering interconnection services should provide relevant information about its network and services to other Service Providers in order to assist these Service Providers in network planning, financial planning and operation of their networks.

Examples of such information are:

· Switch locations and names

· Homing of Local Exchanges to Service Nodes

· Hosting of number ranges to exchanges

· Site locations on the Transport network

All information provided between Service Providers shall be subject to the terms of confidentiality rules in the RIO and the Interconnection Agreements. Any information exchanged between Service Providers for the purpose of interconnection planning and operations shall only be used for that purpose. The level of information provided shall be the same for similar interconnection services.

In both normal and abnormal situations (e.g. in case of network problems), the rules for routing traffic should be non-discriminatory. The routing arrangements must include provisions for handling overflow, congestion and network management.

In the event of a fault, all Service Providers, including Dominant Service Providers, shall share as much information as may be required to resolve the problem and restore service to normal operation.

7.3.2 Planned network changes

All Service Providers shall provide reasonable notice to all other Service Providers about any planned network change or upgrade which may be expected to affect the operation of interconnection arrangements between the Service Providers. Sufficient time shall be allowed for Service Providers to make necessary changes or adjustments to their systems and networks to ensure continuity of service. The minimum period of advance notification shall be 60 days unless agreed otherwise.

Examples are:

· Planned changes to the network structure

· Planned changes to the signalling or routing arrangements 

· Planned changes to the numbering scheme

Service Providers shall notify other Service Providers of any significant changes made in the network that may affect the quality of service of interconnection links.

7.3.3 Interconnection links database

All Service Providers shall maintain a database of the interconnect links between their networks and those of other Service Providers. This database should contain all related information such as:

· A unique identifier (common to both Service Providers) of each interconnection link

· The terminating exchange details

· Information on the transmission path including capacity

· Traffic routing plan

· The signalling plan

The information contained in this database should also be provided semi-annually in electronic form to the Commission, and at any other time when requested.

7.4 Dispute resolution The Dominant Service Provider shall include in its RIO the procedure for resolving disputes including notification, meeting and response times and the time limit for resolution before the dispute is escalated to the next level.

The dispute resolution procedure of the Dominant Service Provider shall include an escalation process through various levels:

Level 1: Resolution at an operational working group level

Level 2: Referral of dispute at senior management level 

Level 3: Referral to the ​