How this reference is built

Mechanics, not marketing — this describes the actual pipeline that produces every page in this section.

Source hierarchy

We rank evidence in three tiers. Tier 1: gazette notifications, statutes, regulations, tariff orders, official circulars and application forms. Tier 2: official authority portal instructions, FAQs and contact directories. Tier 3: reputable secondary material, used only to discover where a Tier 1 or Tier 2 document lives, never as the final evidence for a claim.

What "archived" means

A tariff figure is published on this site only when the tariff order itself — the actual PDF, checksummed and stored — is on file. A web page describing a tariff, or a snapshot of a listing page, does not qualify. This distinction has caught real errors: an early snippet-derived rate for one state overstated a tariff by about 25% against the order that was later obtained.

How a state earns a full hub page

A jurisdiction publishes as a full hub only once it has at least 15 verified requirements, 8 registered sources, an archived tariff order, and an archived connection form. Below that it gets a single consolidated page; below a lower bar it appears only as a row in the comparison table, with no standalone page. A state is promoted automatically when its evidence crosses the threshold — never by an editorial decision — which is what keeps new pages tied to new evidence rather than to page-count targets.

Respecting our own uncertainty

Where our source material itself grades a figure as discovery-only, unverified, or requiring confirmation, we withhold that figure from the page rather than publish it as fact. The page states plainly that something exists but is not yet evidenced, and links to the authority instead of guessing. What we could not verify from any primary source is listed on every page under "What is still unconfirmed" — deliberately, not as a disclaimer buried in a footer.

Freshness

Every page shows the date its content was last verified against a source. That date drives the page's technical freshness signal — it is never set to "today" just because the page was regenerated; a rebuild with no new evidence does not claim new freshness.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will check it against the primary source and correct the page, the underlying record, or both.