GOVT. EXPANDS TELECOM SERVICE PRIORITY FOR FINANCE SECTOR
Eligibility for emergency telecom programs administered by National Communications System has been expanded for private sector financial organizations, measure that Federal Reserve Board said is critical in wake of last year’s terrorist attacks. Finance sector since 1993 has been eligible to participate in national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) programs such as Telecom Service Priority (TSP), which in event of national crises ensures that certain dedicated voice, backbone and access circuits used by sector can operate despite severe network congestion or disruption.
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Board, which decides whether interested non-govt. financial firms can participate in NS/EP initiatives, effective Dec. 9 extended that “sponsorship criteria” to Govt. Emergency Telecom Service (GETS) and Wireless Priority Service (WPS) programs. Board said: “These programs will help facilitate the operation and liquidity of banks and the stability of financial markets, particularly during periods of substantial operational disruptions… The events of Sept. 11, 2001, put a new focus on the importance of these programs to the nation and the financial sector.”
GETS will expand priority access and processing of long distance and local calls made by eligible financial firms over public switched telephone network. WPS will provide priority routing of certain cellular calls when WPS is deployed nationwide by end of next year. Rather than giving priority access to eligible financial firms, as in case under TSP, new criteria for GETS and WPS are limited to designated employees of those companies, board said: “Unlike the TSP program, where the board sponsors specific lease-line circuits, in the GETS program the board sponsors individuals… who play critical roles in the operation of the organization’s payment services, business continuity, or crisis management structure.”
Information provided to board when applying for NS/EP program eligibility “will be, in most cases, proprietary,” and will be afforded greater confidentiality by govt., board said. It acknowledged that applicants may have to disclose phone numbers and e-mail addresses of key personnel, as well as operations center addresses. Other disclosures could include descriptions of “topology of their payments network and disaster-recovery capabilities,” in addition to identification of telecom services providers and unique circuit identifiers, it said: “Because of the sensitive nature of this information, the board generally will consider information related to NS/EP services exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.”