VoiceStream and National Communications System (NCS) told FCC tha...

said it was in final negotiations with NCS to deploy initial WPS system in Washington and N.Y. NCS had planned to award contract for first leg of system by as early as last Dec. System that will be available immediately in those 2 cities will serve 5,000 users with priority status, Feb. 13 filing said. VoiceStream has short-term waiver petition pending before FCC for one technical requirement for priority access service. Commission in 2000 issued order laying out technical requirements for carriers that chose to deploy WPS but agency didn’t made that offering mandatory. Peter Fonash of NCS said in filing that WPS eventually would “be offered by several wireless operators as a public service, further increasing public safety access to WPS and further diluting the nominal impact WPS would have on nonpriority customers.” Govt.-industry engineering effort has been focused on specifications for how comprehensive, industrywide system would operate. One issue for carriers has been how to reach balance between capacity subscribers would have on network during emergencies and capacity set aside for govt. national security and emergency personnel (NS/EP) (CD Dec 17 p2). NCS said: (1) WPS would be accessed only for public safety reasons. (2) “Nominal impact on nonpriority users would be only near the scenes of emergencies.” (3) NCS would monitor WPS usage to detect potential improper usage. In plans for nationwide rollout, GSM operators are developing ways to preserve portion of system capacity for calls that aren’t priorities or 911 requests “if the system were to become ‘monopolized’ by the priority users.” Filing said: “Unlike the wireline service, the wireless industry is severely constrained by the amount of radio spectrum it can use to offer both WPS and nonpriority services.” As result, NCS said balance must be struck between priority users and general public. Filing included research results on behalf of NCS and CTIA by SAIC and Telcordia on impact of WPS. Analysis assumed, based on past performance of wireline Govt. Emergency Telephone System, 15% probability that wireless calls would be blocked during emergencies. If no radio channels were reserved for priority users, blocking probability for wireless calls in emergencies would hit 85.7%, research showed. That probability rises slightly to 89.4% if 25% of radio channels are reserved for NS/EP users, NCS said.