WASHINGTON TO BE FIRST CITY FOR WIRELESS PRIORITY ACCESS
Washington will be first city in nation to have wireless priority access system in govt. contract award to mobile carrier that will be unveiled as early as this week, National Communications System (NCS) Deputy Mgr. Brent Greene said. System is expected to be in place in mid-Dec. amid renewed interest by federal govt. and wireless industry after Sept. 11 attacks in finding ways for public safety agencies to have uninterrupted access to wireless networks during emergencies. In interview with Communications Daily, Greene said first contract covered short-term solution for priority access and that other, as yet-unnamed cities also would be covered under initial system. He called near-term priority access system “a major step toward a more complete solution in following years.” Long-term solution, which would consist of nearly national footprint with single carrier, is to be rolled out “late in 2002,” Greene told us. That will “be a much more user friendly solution.” While both legs of wireless priority access system at outset will use single carrier, within 3-5 years other carriers may be added to contract, depending on funding, he said. Within last several weeks, Greene said he and Richard Clarke, special adviser to President Bush for cyberspace security, have talked with FCC Chmn. Powell about Commission waivers likely to be needed for short-term PAS system. “They understand that,” he said of FCC’s view on need for near-term waivers.
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Last year, FCC released order that allowed commercial mobile radio service providers to offer priority access service (PAS) to govt. public safety workers in emergencies. Order said wireless carriers were permitted but not required to provide service, although none has made it available in interim. While there has been speculation since Sept. 11 attacks whether govt. eventually would require carriers to provide PAS, Greene said that wouldn’t be necessary. “We have gotten tremendous cooperative support from a broad range of companies in discussions about this,” he said. “Our goal is to develop cooperative solutions in partnership with industry and therefore we want it to be a voluntary type of process.” Greene said NCS didn’t want to go route of govt. mandates: “We don’t want to do that. That starts driving things in ways that may not be compatible with where industry needs to go and is going today.” In sign of industry interest, CTIA has described how industry can make wireless priority access available to 500 national security and rescue workers within 60 days, which would be in line with mid-Oct. proposals issued by NCS soliciting short-term and longer term solutions for PAS. CTIA also said industry could make system available to 50,000 govt. workers with priority access by end of next year. “What we have gotten from CTIA is basically a letter of support for the idea and the concept,” Greene said.
For immediate solution, system would make capacity available on wireless networks using process similar to channel reservation, Greene said. That essentially would mean that in emergencies, function would be switched on in system that would make certain proportion of circuits available for emergency users, he said. “In that case, we are taking away a relatively small percentage, way below a majority of available capacity on the network,” he said. Still, he said, “that is capacity that is not as available and we're still working out what the reimbursement arrangements are for that.” Longer term solution would work differently in that cell towers within network would recognize that incoming call was from federally approved priority user “and you get head-of-the-line privileges,” he said. “We don’t dump anybody off the circuits.”
Final decisions on govt. request for proposal on long- term solution still are “months away,” Greene said. “We don’t have any bids in yet on the long-term solution.” Year- end 2002 target date for national system is date when deployment would start, although full rollout probably would take several months beyond that date, he said. Within 3-5 years beyond that, system that utilized multiple carriers was possible, although funding to broaden plan would need to be in place first, he said. Single-carrier solutions are initial plan because it’s more cost-effective to award contract to one company, he said. “Because of the urgent need today what we have approval to go towards is a single- carrier, immediate solution,” he said. Company that has won short-term contract will need to petition FCC for waiver, which “we will strongly support,” Greene said of NCS. Waiver is needed because all of PAS capabilities in FCC’s July 2000 order won’t be possible with system that will be ready in such short time period, he said.
Among issues that must be worked out is how compatibility will be addressed between system users and whatever technology is used on wireless network chosen for system, Greene said. Multiband phones are possibility, although users who have phones that use different technology still may have to upgrade their handsets to have access to service, he said. “We've not worked out all the ‘who pays for what’ kinds of things,” Greene said, and he particularly wouldn’t want to prejudge how that would work before long- term contract was awarded. Greene declined to discuss overall dollar figure for near-term or long-term plans, saying specifics still were being worked out. He said GETS system had cost nearly $300 million to deploy. Greene said goal of NCS was to build wireless PAS system so that it was “totally compatible” with wireline GETS infrastructure. “What we want to do is build a complementary piece at 2 ends of it, so that if you are calling from a cellphone -- as well as to a cellphone -- that it’s priority receipt at the other end as well as priority delivery,” Greene said.
Emergency response to Sept. 11 attacks has brought urgency of priority access to fore since then. NCS said last month that govt. was accelerating efforts to put system in place for wireless networks, noting that terrorist attacks “reaffirmed the need for such a capability and its accelerated implementation.” Greene praised efforts in aftermath of Sept. 11 in finding ways to deploy additional capacity in area and to assist with emergency responses. But loss of much cellphone capacity in immediate areas around disasters meant federal national security and emergency responders relied on wireline priority access system called Govt. Emergency Telephone Service (GETS) to cut through congested communications networks. More than 10,000 calls moved over GETS system in N.Y. and Washington with 95% completion rate after Sept. 11, Greene said. “People who had urgent decisions that needed to be coordinated, that had issues that needed to be talked out, if they were doing it on wireless phones it didn’t work,” he said.
How big a difference wireless priority access system would have made Sept. 11 is hard to quantify, Greene said. “It would have made some of the communications smoother, more effective,” he said. “It would have made some differences. Would it have saved a lot more lives? I don’t know, that was a devastating event. It might have saved some.”