(a) Service provider — a telephone corporation certified in New York State with the authority and tariff to provide local exchange service using either its own or leased facilities.

(b) Basic local service — the provision of access to: one party line service, local/toll calling, local usage, tone dialing, emergency services, assistance services, telecommunications relay services, directory listings, privacy protections and non-published service associated with the public switched network.

(c) Local exchange service — any form of switched telecommunications provided within a defined geographic area known as the local calling area.

(d) Customer service center — any functional entity where consumers can initiate communication with the service provider for installation, billing, repair, operator and other services.

(e) Access line — a telecommunications channel of varying size with an associated telephone number.

(f) Business office — any functional entity which accepts service orders, billing inquiries and/or provides consumer information.

(g) Repair office — any functional entity which receives trouble reports.

(h) Trouble — a trouble is an impairment of the telephone network, or a deviation from its design specifications.

(i) Customer trouble report — the record of when the repair office personnel receives notification of a trouble or perceived trouble by a subscriber, third party, or employee acting as a subscriber or when other employees receive notification of a trouble or perceived trouble by a subscriber, third party, or employee acting as a subscriber and refers the report to the repair office.

(j) Initial report — the first customer trouble report associated with a specific trouble for which there is no pending report.

(k) Out-of-service — a classification of a trouble report where the customer indicates either:

(l) Service affecting — all trouble reports not categorized as out-of-service will be considered service affecting.

(m) Final trunk group — the last choice group of common interoffice communications channels for the routing of local, operator and/or toll calls.

(n) Operator assistance — the act of providing a consumer with help in placing a call including collect, third party billed, person-to-person and emergency calls.

(o) Answer — the point in time when a call has been delivered to a representative who is ready to render assistance and/or accept the information necessary to process the call. An acknowledgment that the customer is on the line does not constitute an answer.

(p) Subsequent report — any customer trouble report that is received prior to the closing of its associated initial report.