Keywords

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Whichever the mode of provisioning of telecom services in the Electrical Power Utility (EPU), and the relationship between the service user and provider (formal, semi-formal, or implicit) it is essential to assure a common understanding of the qualities and attributes of the delivered service. The contractual document that reflects these attributes as well as the obligations and liabilities of the service provider toward the service user is the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

An SLA allows the service user to express the operational constraints of its application as defined in the previous sections to the telecom service provider and to obtain the provider’s assurance that the delivered service shall meet these requirements.

An SLA allows also the service provider to define the network resources and management processes that he must use in order to meet his contractual obligations towards the service user. Furthermore, the service provider may use the SLA toward his service customers in order to specify the level of service that he expects from his contractors and providers (e.g., underlying infrastructure or support services).

Finally the SLA allows the service provider to know what obligations the service user must meet so that the service can be delivered and maintained by the service provider. Examples may include the provision of racks or floor space for the service provider’s equipment, the provision of AC or DC power, access during and out of office hours, third party insurance coverage, etc.

The precision and the exhaustiveness of the SLA become particularly important when the provider is multi-customer and multi-service and the more we move toward a fully procured telecom service.

However, very often multi-customer telecom service providers such as public telecom operators provide a catalog of standard SLAs, none of which may meet the requirements of the EPU. Standard “Operator SLAs” are usually not sufficiently precise to guarantee the fulfillment of operational constraints as described previously and the service provider may not be prepared to review his entire network’s operation mode and operational process to meet one customer’s requirements. In this case, assessing the most appropriate SLA of the provider against the operational constraints of the EPU applications allows the estimation of the gap and the risk analysis associated to the potential impact of this gap. The following checklists given in Figs. 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3 have been prepared to serve utilities for specifying or assessing SLAs in the EPU operational context.

Fig. 10.1
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SLA checklist for EPU procuring telecom connectivity services

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Figure 10.3 titled “Typical Communication Service Requirements for Power Utility Applications” provides a cross reference of typical service requirements for utilities’ applications. The reader should use Fig. 10.2 for characterizing the severity levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Fig. 10.3.

Fig. 10.2
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Constraint severity notation criteria

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Fig. 10.3
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Typical communication service requirements for power utility applications

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