Posted 11/01/2001
Emergency Demands
Industry Likely to Address Network Reliability During Times of Crisis
By Fred Dawson
Policymakers and the press are turning up the volume on discussions regarding what can be done to combat cyber-terrorism and other threats to national infrastructure. But the more immediate question is: How well equipped are the nation's wireline and wireless voice networks to meet demand during times of crisis?
By all accounts the "Herculean efforts" of incumbent telco Verizon Communications Inc., to use the term applied by FCC chairman Michael Powell, greatly limited the disruptive impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in lower Manhattan.
Verizon president and co-CEO Ivan Seidenberg says severe damage to Verizon's central office (CO) on West Street and to other facilities in the area destroyed or disrupted 200,000 voice access lines, 100,000 business lines, 3.6 million data circuits and 10 cellular towers. In early October, Seidenberg updated analysts, at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference, on the state of repairs. About 80 percent of the voice service from the CO had been restored, he told them.
"The ability to draw on our diverse national resources was invaluable," Seidenberg says. "We had the processes and experienced people in place, as well as the industrywide cooperation, to deal with a restoration effort of such enormous magnitude."
Helping to meet rerouting needs was capacity previously secured in deals with alternative carriers in the area and capacity that was contracted for immediately after the disaster, says Verizon spokesman Mark Marchand, who declined to name the carriers involved. "We do buy extra capacity when we need it, and a lot of these companies have extra capacity to sell," he adds.
But Verizon hasn't given much thought to whether there needs to be some mechanism by which alternative carriers' capacity automatically is made available and utilized in times of emergency, thereby avoiding time-consuming attempts to make such arrangements during a crisis, says Marchand. The company also says it hasn't considered how to work with the industry and government to better prepare for future problems.
"I'd defer answers to these questions to the future," Marchand said. "Right now, if you talk to any of our officers, their focus is on restoration."
The industry is beginning to turn its attention to the challenge of ensuring that vital communications continue during emergency situations. This is happening as people come to grips with the thought that the declared "war on terrorism" could trigger more instances of telecommunications disruption, even though telecom facilities per se may not be the direct targets in such attacks. Such thinking should be a matter of priority at the presidentially appointed National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), says Joseph Nacchio, CEO of Qwest Communications International Inc. and vice chairman of NSTAC.
In testimony Oct. 4 before the Senate Government Affairs Committee, Nacchio cited the way carriers came together in New York to deal with the crisis as an example of what could be assured more firmly with some planning at the national level.
"Companies and the public sector can jump start their efforts," Nacchio said. "NSTAC and the National Security Council should immediately initiate a project to develop benchmarks and requirements for Information Security Best Practices for the telecommunications industry."
A primary forum through which the federal government and industry might begin to focus on the question is the FCC's Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC), which was formed in November 1991 to address problems brought to light by various system failures during the previous decade. With a meeting that was slated for late October, the events of Sept. 11 stirred discussion among NRIC leaders as to whether the agenda would have to be adjusted to address the new issues, according to Jack Waters, CTO at Level 3 Communications Inc. and vice chairman of NRIC.
"NRIC's focus has been on reliability, how switches pass traffic and talk to each other or what to do in the event of natural disasters, so it hasn't typically looked at problems related to sabotage," said Waters, during a September interview. "Now I think we'll have a whole new set of things to consider."
Columbia University Business School professor Eli Noam, who is director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, suggested a number of steps that could be taken to ensure the most important calls get through in emergencies. These include setting priorities so non-essential calls are shed from the main routes or translated into voice mail and transmitted as data, over mobile and wireline networks. Automatic time limits on calls could be set -- five minutes for example -- to help keep the lines open, Noam suggests.
"I can't imagine that limiting calls through some piece of software you'd add to the switches to be activated under emergency conditions would be a big issue," Noam said. "Being able to instantaneously assign priority to specific numbers in a building would be much harder, but it wouldn't be hard to assign permanent priority to certain numbers like the Red Cross or other aid organizations for emergency purposes."
But Noam, who says the industry can take such steps without government mandate, is unaware of any action being taken to address such issues. "I think it would be a good thing for NRIC to take under consideration," he adds.
An FCC official involved with NRIC declined to comment on the issue.
Waters says it is inevitable that the September attacks would prompt new thinking on the part of individual companies. "Each company out there is going to have to look really hard at points of vulnerability to potential attacks and determine where they need more redundancy," he notes.
As to what might be done to ensure that backup capacity from alternative carriers automatically kicks in when needed, he agrees, "that's a real good question. Right now there's no federal mandate for such emergency responses."
Waters and others say the need for such backup underlines the need to keep competition in telecommunications as a national priority. "It's important to remember that the marketplace can support just so much redundancy on the part of incumbent carriers, so having other networks in operation is important," Waters says.
While emergency needs would seem to add to the case being made for more wireless spectrum, it remains to be seen whether the issue would be raised as mobile carriers push the FCC toward additional allocations. Verizon Wireless, for one, "won't stoop to using this emergency in that way," says company spokesman Jim Gerace, adding that the company believes the argument for more spectrum already is well made and doesn't need more support.
