Comment on 'Accurate rubidium atomic fountain frequency standard'

We discuss the treatment of distributed cavity phase, microwave lensing and microwave leakage in the paper by Ovchinnikov and Marra (2011 Metrologia 48 87-100). The paper neglects the potential distributed cavity phase shifts from linear phase gradients and quadrupolar phase variations. Only azimuthally symmetric phase variations were analysed and an incorrect model was used for these. The paper also omits an uncertainty due to microwave lensing, which must be included. Finally, we describe additional measurements that could clarify the model used to analyse the frequency shifts due to microwave leakage.