harged as per the care agreement. A fall in performance levels can lead to activation of penalty or liquidity damage clauses. A basic helpdesk form can be of the structure shown in Figure A.10, which can be expanded as given in the collective agreement between the operator and the vendor. Emergency Support Service An emergency support service is undertaken by the vendor to provide a round the clock, all through the year backup support for the operators should they face any critical problem causing serious damage to their networks, due to any kind of equipment-related fault. A typical emergency call-out can occur when a critical network element has failed, causing loss of revenue due to unavailability of the network service in a particular area. Care Phase Request Number: Customer / Area / Name of Network Element Type: requestor: Request Date: Hardware Level: Software Level: Abstract: Description: (Date: For each change) Responses to the customer: (date:) Figure A.10 Specimen helpdesk form That situation can be found in the network operation centre due to the generation of alarms or complaints from customers from that affected region. The operator personnel makes an emergency call to the vendor's local office, where the first line maintenance engineer on call will receive the emergency case and within a stipulated time, e.g. 1 hour, reverts back to the customer and starts the investigation. As long as this situation is in this critical level both the operator and the vendor personnel on call will have to keep the communication lines open. If an immediate solution is not achieved in a few hours or if the situation is too complex for the local person to handle, then he/she can escalate to a higher level, which is usually the product line personnel who has a high level of product competence. During investigation, the product line personnel can ask for more data or logs from that fault situation in order to trace the fault cause and suggest the correct remedy. An emergency process can also involve a call-out situation