Metro Private Line Storage Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The Metro Private Line Storage Service Level Agreement (SLA) applies to Type 1 Metro Private Line Storage Service circuits which are ordered on or after December 1, 2004, with a term commitment of at least one year. Customers will be eligible to receive special credit allowances for failure by the Company to satisfy two Performance Standards: "Service Availability" and "Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)". If these special credit allowances are not applicable to a circuit, the Customer will receive credit outage allowances pursuant to standard credit outage allowance provisions.

1.         Definitions:      For purposes of this SLA, the following definitions apply:

· Mean Time to Repair (MTTR): MTTR is the period of time commencing with the date and time the Customer first informs the Company of a circuit Service Outage (i.e. opens a "Trouble Ticket") and ending on the date and time that service on that circuit is restored.

· Service Availability: Service Availability is the total number of minutes in a monthly billing period during which service on that circuit is available for use by the Customer, divided by the total number of minutes in that monthly billing period. For the purposes of this SLA, Service Availability will be calculated by taking into account the time between the initiation of a Trouble Ticket for a Service Outage and reductions in time for factors or conditions that are not the

M

Company's service responsibility.

· Service Outage: An unscheduled period of time when service is unavailable for use by the Customer. A Service Outage is defined as 60 or more seconds of service unavailability within a 15-minute period measured by the Company. A Service Outage may occur as a result of the Company's failure to meet its performance obligations or for factors or conditions that are not the Company's service responsibility, including those specified in the "Exclusions" section below.

· Trouble Ticket: The result of reporting by a Customer to the Company of a perceived Service Outage.

2.         Qualifications:

To be eligible to receive an SLA credit for a Service Outage, a Customer must: (i) initiate a Trouble Ticket within four hours of first learning of an Outage; and, (ii) make a written request for SLA credit to the Company within five days of initiating the Trouble Ticket. When making an SLA credit request, the Customer must provide the Company with the following information: (1) the Trouble Ticket number; (2) the date and time the Trouble Ticket was initiated; and (3) the circuit ID number for each circuit that experienced the Service Outage.

3.         Service Level Agreements:

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR): The SLA for a Type 1 network configuration service is 2 hours.

            To determine whether the SLA has been satisfied, a monthly "MTTR circuit average" will be determined by dividing the cumulative length of service outages for a circuit by the total number of Trouble Tickets opened during a monthly billing period for the circuit.

Service Availability: The SLA for a Type 1 network configuration service is 100 percent.

4.         Credits: During any monthly billing period in

N

which the Company fails to meet an SLA for a circuit, the Customer will receive credit for that circuit, as follows, provided, however, that the Customer may not receive a special credit allowance for a circuit for more than 6 months in any 12-month period:

· For a one month failure, the Company will provide a credit equal to 25 percent of the monthly recurring circuit charges, after application of all discounts.

· For a failure of two consecutive months, the Company will provide a credit equal to 50 percent of the monthly recurring circuit charges, after application of all discounts, for the second month.

· For a failure of three consecutive months, either: (1) the Company will provide a credit equal to 100 percent of the monthly recurring circuit charges, after application of all discounts, for the third month and each consecutive month thereafter that the Customer remains subscribed to the circuit and the Company fails to satisfy the SLA; or (2) the Customer may terminate service for that circuit without incurring termination liability, except for charges incurred prior to service termination, provided that the Customer notifies the Company in writing of its intent to terminate the circuit no later than 30 days after the conclusion of the third month or any consecutive month

C

thereafter. For a failure of three consecutive months or more, the Company, upon written notice to a Customer, may terminate its performance obligations under this SLA, which will result in the application to circuit performance of the standard credit outage allowance provisions.

5.         Exclusions: Service Availability and MTTR SLA calculations will not include time during which a Service Outage results from any one or more of the following Force Majeure Events:

· Scheduled service maintenance.

· Force Majeure Events.

· Service Outages attributable to the installation of a new circuit.

· Service Outages attributable to: customer premises equipment (CPE); any third party equipment other than equipment furnished by LECs as part of their access services; or any Customer application on a covered circuit.

· Any act or omission on the part of the Customer, its contractors, agents or vendors, including any refusal to release the circuit to the Company for maintenance, testing or repair.