The Network Reliability and Interoperability Council presented its finding and recommendations concerning the telecommunications needs of first responders and public safety officials from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, emergency medical services, and fire departments in the US and Canada. Best practice recommendations include:
- Priority Access: Increase awareness of priority access programs, including Telecommunications Service Priority System (TSP) and Wireless Priority Access Service (WPS) and encourage subscription, as appropriate. Key findings of a survey of emergency responders found low awareness of priority access communications services. While 67% of the survey respondents expressed that wireline applications were relied upon extensively by their agencies, they were not considered reliable enough to be their primary network. In fact, in times of crisis, commercial networks were perceived as severely impaired or grid locked.
- 911 Access: Provide caller location and call origination information to 911 overflow centers to ensure fast and accurate response to 911 calls — both wireless and wireline — during emergencies when 911 call volumes spike.
- Troubleshooting: Service providers and network operators should identify, in coordination with emergency operations personnel, key facilities serving public safety and develop an emergency restoration plan prioritizing restoration of these facilities.
- Network Diversity and Reliability: Secure government funding to enable network diversity.
NRIC’s Public Safety Focus Group was led by Don Dautel, vice president, global technology development group, Motorola, and Mike Roden, director — RF engineering network operations, Cingular Wireless.
Separately, the NRIC’s Cyber Security Focus Group identified more than 200 best practices the industry should consider to restore service in a timely and secure manner.
In December, the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) approved a list of 300 best practices for protecting the nation’s communications infrastructure against terrorist attack or natural disaster. The list of best practices, which has been developed by the NRIC over a period of years, has been updated to cover packet switching architectures as well as more specific responses to cyber attacks. Recommendations include best policies for improving physical security, such as redundant designs for new telecom facilities and personnel background checks, to inventory management techniques that could hasten service restoration in the event of a major disruption.
With these deliverables, the NRIC now plans to move on to a new phase that focuses on implementation of its guidelines. The FCC is preparing to launch soon an education and awareness campaign.
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- The current Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) was chartered by FCC Chairman Powell in January 2002 and is headed by Richard C. Notebaert, CEO of Qwest Communications, and includes corporate representatives from the cable, wireless, satellite and ISP sectors.