Procedural error as root cause of major telecommunication service outages

This paper provides a statistical analysis of major telecommunications service outages, which occurred in the United States between July 1, 1992 and June 30, 1999 as a result of procedural errors. The analysis found that procedural errors are the root cause for 34% of major service outages. The frequency of major outages caused by procedural errors has increased almost 3% per quarter since July 1992. Documentation problems, insufficient training, and insufficient supervision are the major root cause sub-categories among procedural errors. Almost half of major outages caused by procedural errors occur at switches (local or tandem)