This Annual Report reviews the health of the wireline telecommunications networks for the year 2001, as well as trends observed over the last nine years of outage reporting to the FCC. The past year was an extraordinary one, marked by dramatic events that have highlighted the criticality of the nation’s communications infrastructure. Telecommunications reliability was not only challenged by natural disasters, but also by the damage as a result of the September 11th terrorist attack. The industry’s cooperation and commitment to service and reliability enabled it to meet these challenges.