Emergency Communications More Pressing Than Ever Amid Increasing Disasters, NARUC Hears

"We have to break out of the straitjacket of pretending climate change is not actually happening,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, in a Tuesday keynote. “The world seems to be a more dangerous place than it was 20 years ago,” NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman John Burke said at a Tuesday panel on how communications networks can endure during what seemed to many speakers to be an increasing number of weather hazards. The derecho caused serious 911 outages in the mid-Atlantic, and Sandy knocked out a large fraction of cell sites in New England. Cell networks maintained some “level of coverage” even during the outages of Sandy, said CTIA Director-State Regulatory Affairs Jackie McCarthy.

Jurisdictional confusion complicates how officials handle communications problems, said Maryland Public Service Commission Chairman Doug Nazarian. The PSC lacks any information about wireless, and when 911 centers went down during a 2010 storm, the commission had little clear way of learning what happened, he said. Several entities, including the FCC, state commissions, 911 centers and utilities, play roles, panelists said. The PSC had to turn to the FCC, Nazarian said. “Jurisdictional issues should be the last thing you worry about, honestly,” Burke said, citing lives at stake. “Is that really the kind of discussion we should be having when the sea walls aren’t holding the waters back?”

NARUC is “uniquely positioned” to help coordinate all the entities involved, said USTelecom Vice President-Industry and State Affairs Robert Mayer. He described “progress” in the telecom world and a series of good reports and helpful steps. There have been big improvements in developing information sharing infrastructure and “real-time” coordination, said Mayer, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. The industry has learned lessons from weather events like Sandy, hurricanes Katrina, Irene and Rita and the derecho, he said. “We have absolutely zero incentive to have networks go down,” he added, saying industry doesn’t enjoy “the wrath of regulators or government officials."

Consumer confusion is an obstacle, some said. “I don’t think people are really aware of the amount of power they have,” said Colorado Consumer Counsel Bill Levis. People don’t even distinguish between their types of phones, and they expect whatever device they have to work, he said. Mobile devices lose power in a matter of hours without a charge, unlike traditional wireline phones, panelists said. The new mobile and advanced devices are the wave of the future, which industry will have to learn to make resilient, Mayer said.

New 911 technology will help, said National Emergency Number Association Government Affairs Director Trey Forgety. He described new and cheap technology that will allow 911 centers to observe spikes and drops in their call numbers, which will help monitoring immensely, he said. That'll cost about $700 per 911 center and be available “right around the corner,” he said. “The data’s there -- it’s simply not being taken out and looked at right now."

States can take advantage of encouraging that data sharing, and should remove laws and regulations that may hinder the deployment of next-generation 911, Forgety said. He praised the promise of text-to-911 and described pilots at work now. Texts require less data and can often be sent when voice calls can’t, panelists said. Mayer and Forgety emphasized participation in the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, other national organizations and FCC reporting mechanisms. McCarthy credited municipal officials with telling people to text rather than call and to keep their phones charged. States should have more regulatory authority given the effects of these disasters, Levis said.

Utilities should also play a first response role, especially now that so much of communications depends on electricity, said Exelon Senior Manager Doug McGinnis. Indiana Commissioner Larry Landis pointed to the risks of a future Internet Protocol world, saying: “The whole network is at issue in the sense that to a much greater extent IP networks are dependent on the underlying electrical networks for much of their power."

Burke asked panelists what lessons FirstNet might learn and whether the federal public safety broadband network should stand alone, despite the higher cost. A stand-alone FirstNet model is “simply not going to be the case,” Forgety said. He attacked “the notion that we've ever had truly standalone networks” in public safety and said it would be scores of billions of dollars more expensive to do so with FirstNet. The $7 billion allocated to FirstNet will allow government to “start deploying in a measured way” on commercial networks, with some specific hardening as needed, he said. States and others told NTIA last week of their concerns about FirstNet. (See separate report above in this issue.)