Contract # GS00T01AHD0002
Proposal to Add Federal Telecommunications Service Long Distance (FTS LD)
6.8.1.2
Service Level Agreement (SLA) Service
Availability Guarantee
Customers of the AT&T DSL Internet Service who have purchased and been
provisioned with Multi User Service ( Customers ) are provided a limited guarantee
of service availability, subject to the Program Rules and Regulations set forth in the
AT&T DSL Internet Service Guide. If a Customer experiences a Service Outage in
excess of ________________ for any of Customer's Multi User DSL lines during
any calendar day, the Customer will be eligible for a credit ________________ of the
Customer's Monthly Service Fee for such Multi User DSL line, subject to the
maximums specified in the Programs Rules and Regulations.
6.8.2 How DSL Works
Traditional phone service (sometimes called POTS) connects the customer to a
telephone company office over copper wires that are wound around each other and
called twisted pair. Traditional phone service was created to let the customer
exchange voice information with other phone users and the type of signal used for
this kind of transmission is called an analog signal. An input device such as a phone
set takes an acoustic signal and converts it into an electrical equivalent in terms of
volume and pitch. Since the telephone company's signaling is already set up for this
analog wave transmission, it is easier for it to use that as the way to get information
back and forth between the Government's telephone and the telephone company.
Because analog transmission only uses a small portion of the available amount of
information that could be transmitted over copper wires, the maximum amount of
data that the Government can receive using ordinary modems is about 56 Kbps. The
ability of the Government's computer to receive information is constrained by the
fact that the telephone company filters information that arrives as digital data, puts it
Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the restriction on the title page of this proposal.
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