NARUC Notebook...

FCC Comr. Abernathy said the nation’s ability to identify threats to telecom infrastructures and maintain emergency communications when man-made or natural disasters strike have improved since the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, but more still needs to be done. “We have addressed critical areas over the last three-and-a- half years, but it’s not enough,” she said. Speaking on a utility infrastructure security panel at the NARUC winter meeting, Abernathy said the FCC’s focus before 9/11 was on coping with natural disasters. “After this event, we evaluated and found serious lacks” in emergency communications and service restoration. She said the FCC since then has strengthened industry partnerships to improve E-911 and emergency communications for public safety entities. She said the FCC and industry worked to create priority service restoration rules for both landline and wireless service so emergency personnel get top priority for available network capacity. And the FCC established a homeland security policy council under the FCC Chief of Staff to coordinate ongoing agency efforts. To address the kind of radio interoperability problems that emerged from 9/11, where radio sets of different agencies couldn’t communicate with each other, Abernathy said the FCC set aside 97 MHz across 10 different radio bands for public safety use, but only for agencies whose radios meet interoperability standards. She also noted that as of Jan. 1, all new public safety radio equipment sold in the U.S. must meet interoperability standards. “We have the bandwidth and we have the technology in place. We should be able to achieve dramatic improvements” in emergency communications, cautioning that emergency service organizations aren’t under direct control of the FCC. She said 9/11 also revealed infrastructure interdependency vulnerabilities because communication depends on uninterrupted electric power, while electric restoration depends on communications: “We in telecom are only one piece of the total infrastructure picture. We need to better understand infrastructure interdependencies so we can plan for their effects.” In response to a question, Abernathy noted that the national radio/TV emergency broadcast system was designed for Cold War threats to the entire nation, not localized emergencies in a single city, state or region. She said the FCC is looking into various approaches using commercial and govt. radio services to broadcast localized emergency information to only the affected area. Other panelists described how national homeland security infrastructure protection initiatives have evolved to include state and local efforts. They urged state regulators to establish and maintain contact with the federal homeland security coordinator for their state.