1. Do you have a particular format or template for the Notice of Intent to Participate?. 2. Would TGSLC be interested in longer 5yr term alternate proposal? t interested to many things are changing within Telecom industry. 3. Exhibit D Scope of Work a) II. SIP Trunking Requirements on Pg 30 i. Discusses the # of calls initially being 300,000 monthly & growing to 1,000,000 over time is there an average call duration data available? TG s response: Present estimated SIP traffic would all be short duration 30 seconds or less. Currently TG s outbound traffic is about 90% intrastate and 10% interstate. ii. If not, please provide rough call volume details (in minutes monthly) for: LOCAL calling Long Distance Inter-State Inter-LATA Intra-LATA Toll Free Inter-State Inter-LATA Intra-LATA iii. T.38 How many monthly fax calls are anticipated (# calls)? t going to FAX at this time just need capability for possible future usage. What s the average call duration of T.38 fax calls (min or seconds)? t going to FAX at this time just need capability for possible future usage. iv. Avaya Proactive Contact Predictive Dialers How many new calls per second is the dialer pulsing? TG s response: All Dialer traffic is routed through Avaya PBX before it will be routed out over SIP trunks. TG will only be routing outbound traffic at this time. Dialer calls will be mixed with other TG outbound traffic. TG outbound calls that will be routed out over service provided by this RFP will average 30 seconds or less. What is the total % of new calls being generated by the dialer of total traffic? TG s response: All Dialer traffic is routed through Avaya PBX before it will be routed out over SIP trunks. TG will only be routing outbound traffic at this time. Dialer calls will be mixed with other TG outbound traffic. TG outbound calls that ~ 1 ~
will be routed out over service provided by this RFP will average 30 seconds or less. v. D. The SIP Trunks shall include, but shall not be limited to the following: 3. X11 services please provide more details on the X11 requirement. requirements at this time just asking for providers to explain if they have these capabilities to provide details of these offerings if available 6. VDN services please provide more details on the VDN requirement. TG s response: We are looking to see what providers areas of coverage is for local numbers that could be extended to TG s Round Rock location. Say provider has coverage in Houston. TG would get local Houston number from provider. TG could then have Houston customers call local Houston number which is then routed to TG s Round Rock location. Call would be free to end user. TG has no requirements at this time for VDN s. b) B. Telecommunications Services, i. 3. Internet Service on page 30 Would TGSLC be interested in an Ethernet 50M solution in lieu of the DS3/45M currently in place? Are repondents NOT required to bid internet, or will that be a separate procurement? TG s response: See Exhibit D II.D. 9 Provider will need to provide circuit(s) to transport SIP trunk traffic from TG s Round Rock location to providers Point of Presence. Internet service not required as part of this bid. ii. 4. Point-to-Point Services on page 30 Would TGSLC be interested in an Ethernet 3M or 5M solution in lieu of 2xT1s between locations? How are the T1 connections between the locations currently used (IE: what IT resources are supported by the connection, what business purpose fulfilled?) TG s response: not part of RFP requirements 4. What is the current annual inbound toll free minutes of use? TG s response: Around 3.5 million minutes. 5. What is the expected annual inbound toll free minutes of use (i.e. in 6 months or one year)? TG s response: Less than 100,000 minutes might be required of provider 6. What is the average length of an inbound toll free call? TG s response: Approximately 5 minutes ~ 2 ~
7. What % of inbound toll free calls require a network transfer? TG s response: TG only requires that we can have toll free calls redirected to a DID number for Disaster Recovery proposes. Please explain process for this requirement i.e. phone call, portal access etc. and time required to complete. 8. What is the current annual local inbound/did minutes of use (i.e. calls to local inbound/did numbers) handled by contact center agents? TG s response: This information is not needed as TG will continue to use AT&T for delivery of local calls assigned to them. 9. What are the primary inbound/local inbound toll free features used by TG? TG s response: ANI is passed for all TG inbound local calls. TG does not use switched local inbound toll free as all of TGs current toll free numbers are delivered over dedicated circuits. 10. WE would need to split up the services as Managed Messaging for short duration calls how many SIP trunks would you need for this? TG s response: Present estimated SIP traffic would all be short duration 30 seconds or less. 11. Local Voice Complete Service for X11, DIDs, operator assist, etc.. How many SIP trunks would you need for this? requirement at this time. 12. Dedicated Toll-Free for inbound, DNIS, etc.. How many SIP trunks would you need for this? requirement at this time 13. Can you describe your VDN service you are requesting and what it entails. TG s response: We are looking to see what providers areas of coverage is for local numbers that could be extended to TG s Round Rock location. Say provider has coverage in Houston. TG would get local Houston number from provider. TG could then have Houston customers call local Houston number which is then routed to TG s Round Rock location. Call would be free to end user. TG has no requirements at this time for VDN s. 14. Do you want us to provide point to points or just the service to connect SIP trunks? TG s response: See Exhibit D II.D. 9 Provider will need to provide circuit(s) to transport SIP trunk traffic from TG s Round Rock location to providers Point of Presence. Internet service not required as part of this bid. 15. Will the AT&T rings still provide transport for service between sites. changes are planned at this time. AT&T will remain TG s primary Telecommunications Service Provider 16. Can we use the AT&T internet as back-up for SIP. ~ 3 ~
TG s response: AT&T internet connection does not support QOS 17. Exhibit D, I-B, page 22 (and what s up with those page numbers going from 1 to 6 and then starting over again at 1?) TG s response: There is an explanation of current AT&T services and one for RFP requirement. a) You have services divided into the categories of local service, toll service, internet service and point-to-point service. We don t organize our service in quite the same way. Our services are categorized into outbound calling, inbound DID calling, inbound toll free calling and interconnect facilities. As a nationwide SIP services provider, our services are not jurisdictional i.e. there is no local vs. long distance in the way that we offer services. We intend to answer this section from that perspective. Is that acceptable?. 18. Exhibit D, I-B-1, page 22 a) Toll free numbers with DNIS routing is listing under local service. This seems a little odd. Is there a reason for this? TG s response: This was in reference to switched verses dedicated Toll Free. Again, our services are categorized a bit differently, so toll free is toll free, whether local or long distance. Is this acceptable? b) Can you clarify what is meant by Rerouting of select DID numbers though setup of call routing trees and branches within provider network for routing to recovery facilities. Rerouting through trees and branches sounds a bit like an IVR function. Recovery facilities sounds like a disaster recovery function. that is what we are looking for. The ability to route calls to alternate location in case of an outage at TGs Round Rock location 19. Exhibit D, I-B-2, page 22 a) Regarding toll free numbers with DNIS routing: Is this anything more than destination routing? Is the DNIS = Toll Free Number or a DNIS of 5-6 digits? TG s response: We presently receive 4 digits b) Regarding TG customization of outbound ANI delivery: Is this anything more than the manipulation of the calling party number and CNAM on outbound calls? 20. Exhibit D, II-B-2, page 24 a) Can you clarify the definition of VDN (Virtual Directory Number) and how it will be used? TG s response: We are looking to see what providers areas of coverage is for local numbers that could be extended to TG s Round Rock location. Say provider has coverage in Houston. TG would get local Houston number from provider. TG could then have Houston customers call local Houston number which is then routed to TG s Round Rock location. Call would be free to end user. TG has no requirements at this time for VDN s. ~ 4 ~
21. Exhibit D, II-B-4, page 24 a) Can you clarify what is meant by at TG s directive? Does this mean a directive communicated via phone call, email or on-line trouble ticket? Or, by some other machine-to-machine communication? b) Can you clarify what is meant by under TG s control? TG s response: That any changes would need to be approved and made through a defined Change Control process that provider and TG agree to. c) Our intention is to provision trunks from TG s location to at least two of our switches. The routing over these trunks can be load-balanced, round-robin, or primary-secondary with automatic fail-over. Any SIP trunk can be quickly re-directed to another IP address or another site by our support staff at TG s directive communicated by phone, email or online trouble ticket. Is this acceptable? 22. Exhibit E, Pricing Table I, Minute Costs, page 30 a) As mentioned above, our services are categorized into outbound calling, inbound DID calling, inbound toll free calling and interconnect facilities. And, we intend to offer pricing in these categories. Is that acceptable? b) For outbound calling, we can offer pricing based on a rate deck of called NPA-NXX or a flat rate per minute. In general, the rate deck offers more advantageous pricing for you, but presents slightly more complexity in cost accounting. Does TG have a preference for rate deck or flat rate? TG s response: Flat rate 23. Exhibit E, Questions below Pricing Table II, page 31 a) Explain how your solution will address answer supervision on SIP trunks. seems out of place in the pricing section. Is this a typo? If we need to answer the question, could you please clarify it. We wondered if this was a reference to detecting if the call was answered by voicemail/answering-machine, fax or a live person. that is what we are asking. 24. Exhibit F, Bidder s References, #1 & #2, page 32 a) The difference between #1 & #2 seems to be recently performed services similar to the services described in this RFP vs. customers who have been regularly using, for a period of at least two (2) years, the same or similar as are described in this RFP. We respectfully suggest that this sounds like it applies to a one-time service or installation event rather than a telecommunications service consumed over months and years. We can offer 3 reference customers who recently began using our services, but they aren t going to have a lot of historical perspective. We can also offer 3 reference customer who have been using our services for at least two years. They will have good historical perspective to offer. Do you want both or just the latter? ~ 5 ~
TG s response: Just the latter. 25. Exhibit H, Subcontractors /Suppliers Information, page 35 a) Could you more succinctly define Subcontractor and Supplier? We ask because we use multiple downstream telecommunications suppliers. We may add or subtract such suppliers as market conditions warrant. In general, we don t consider if these suppliers are minority, women or disable-veteran owned, and we d prefer not to information about them in this section. Is that acceptable? ~ 6 ~