If an infectious disease were to spread rapidly, it would likely cause workers to telecommunicate to avoid clustering in common locations. This could have major technology implications as traffic shifts from enterprise infrastructure to residential infrastructure, reported a working group during a Dec. 13 Federal Communications Commission communications security, reliability and interoperability council meeting in Washington, D.C.

Right now there are two federal services that address this scenario: The Government Emergency Telecommunications Service and the Wireless Priority Service. The current challenge is going from a circuit-switched infrastructure to an Internet protocol-based infrastructure, as more communication migrates to IP, reported CSRIC Working Group 7.

The CSRIC working group has now completed a next generation IP priority service requirements document that specifies the order of magnitude of users, types of services covered, number of levels of priority, processes for authorizing priority access, performance standards and metrics, and expected costs. The group also crafted a priority services implementation strategy.

The CSRIC working group's report formulated six key recommendations. The FCC should:

• Initiate rulemaking proceeding to consider legal framework for priority services in an IP-based next generation network environment;
• review TSP authorization and determine if updates to TSP authorization are required for broadband;
• clarify in rules the White House criteria to qualify for national security/emergency preparedness priority service applied to Critical Infrastructure employees with mission-critical responsibilities;
• work with the Executive and Legislative branches to heighten awareness of the need for funding to support: The extension of GETS/WPS to support a significantly-expanded user population and the transition of GETS/WPS from circuit-switched voice to NGN IP-based voice, video and data;
• continue to provide the legal and regulatory guidance to the National Communications System and the communications industry; and
• continue to provide the legal and regulatory guidance to the NCS and the sponsoring organizations.

The group also set the "rough order of magnitude cost" for implementation of this plan at $1.9 billion over nine years.

"Those costs are broken out into seven components. Those costs require vetting among the different stakeholders-government, industry, the users, and so forth-to look at a more realistic budget," explained working group Co-Chair Ingrid Caples, chief technology officer, Office of Preparedness and Emergency Operations at Health and Human Services. "I'm not saying it's high. I'm not saying it's low, but it is a rough order of magnitude."

Few changes were made from the working groups' initial draft, but comments from industry resulted in one noteworthy addition to a soon-to-be-published report. The comment touches on statutory protections for telecoms:

"Absent some statutory protections from liability, providers of mobile data services are likely to be reluctant to offer NGN priority services for [National Security/Emergency Preparedness] users, even if it would not be unlawful to do so. This is due to the likelihood that, in localized incidents, the use of priority services by NS/EP users could result in blocked calls or data sessions for non-priority users. Accordingly, in addition to an FCC ruling on the legality of providing IP-based on the NGN for NS/EP purposes, the WG7 team believes that the FCC and the NS/EP community should pursue statutory liability protections for carriers who agree to provide such NGN priority services to NS/EP users."

For more:
- view a video of the FCC meeting here

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