General

In order to meet the service demands of a progressive and rapidly expanding international fully automatic telephone network with the best possible quality of service, it is essential that all factors adversely affecting the quality of service should be detected and service restored as quickly as possible. In setting this objective it is recognized that perfect performance is unattainable and that beyond a certain point, costs can rise sharply out of proportion compared with service quality gain.

When choosing a suitable maintenance method or a combination of methods one should consider:

– the reliability of the plant to be maintained;

– the availability of testing and supervisory facilities as well as the availability and quality of manpower in the maintenance organization;

– the availability of facilities in the plant that indicate the existence and frequency of disturbances;

– the availability of arrangements for automatic remedial action;

– the availability of automatic means to process and analyse operational data received from the plant;

– the final objective i.e. to ensure a satisfactory overall service quality (subscriber-to-subscriber) in the international connection, giving equal importance to the national and international parts of the chain that constitute the connection.

It is recognized that a combination of maintenance methods may be applied.