The Jeff Pulver Blog: Pulver/Evslin Petition to the FCC on Post-Disaster Communications:

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March 13, 2006

Pulver/Evslin Petition to the FCC on Post-Disaster Communications:

Today, Tom Evslin and I filed a Petition with the US Federal Communications Commission in an effort to mitigate the effects of long-term telephone outages in the event of natural disasters or other public crises. Our concern is that if the FCC waits too long for formation and formal recommendations before taking any further action to address emergency situations, then communications providers will be unprepared in the case of an immediate emergency. With the threat of terrorist action still looming and the next hurricane season right around the corner, we thought it was important for the FCC to act soon to ensure that the consequence of outages to telecommunications services are swiftly mitigated prior to the time communications links can be restored.

In the wake of Katrina, those who had mobile and VoIP phones could be located quickly. They took their phones with them when they evacuated. They left greetings saying where they were so that, even when their phones weren't operable, loved ones could be reassured and rescuers could be spared searching for them. Even those who had voice mail and call forwarding as features of their PSTN service could quickly reestablish communication. But, as the tragedy made plain, a large percentage of low income people do not have any mobile phones, VoIP, or even the premium features of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Their numbers became useless once their local lines were inoperable or inaccessible.

Our Petition is pretty straight forward and is NOT intended to serve as a vehicle to extol the merits of IP-based communications. (There is time enough to sing the praises of Internet communications, but we did not want this issue to be held back over a battle over preferred technologies, policies and politics.) We simply want to make sure that everyone has a communications life-line established before the next public crisis.

We primarily ask for a mechanism to ensure that individuals are reachable after a public crisis that causes communications networks to go down. We propose a solution that we think could provide immediate relief before the next hurricane season and before more elaborate rules might feasibly be established. We ask simply that the FCC require any provider obligated to provide E911 services to establish an alternate communications service for affected customers via either: (1) activating for each customer a voicemail service that would be accessed by incoming callers dialing the customer's phone number, or (2) providing expedited local number porting to an alternate service provider selected by the customer, including porting to a number outside of the geographic area and/or rate center. Either of these proposals would provide a technically feasible and reasonable means of ensuring that consumers remain connected during emergencies.

We hope to discuss the Petition and other mechanisms to improve post-disaster communications at Spring 2006 VON. In particular, as a long-time Ham Radio enthusiast, I am looking forward to hearing from Dave Sumner, CEO of the ARRL, and his views on how to improve emergency preparedness. His experience with the ARRL's Field Day provides a lot of insight and experience from which the IP-based communications industry could learn as we figure out how we play a role in preserving and advancing communications during and after public crises.

I am also looking forward to hearing from Greg Meffert, the CTO of the City of New Orleans, whose ingenuity in deploying Vonage service after Katrina allowed a communications life-line to the outside world and President Bush. We also will have several other government officials exploring how best to improve emergency response and post-disaster communications. And we have many innovators pushing the Internet and IP technology in an effort to advance emergency response capabilities.

I just hope we can advance the ball when the IP-based communications industry comes together at Spring VON.

And I hope the Petition we filed today will help ensure that no one is left without a communications life-line during the next public crisis.

Tags: Post-Disaster Communications, FCC, voip, von, ARRL, Tom Evslin, Jeff Pulver

(c) 2006 Jeff Pulver. All Rights Reserved.
(This blog posting is copyright protected by Jeff Pulver. Portions of this blog posting may be quoted or abstracted if attributed.)

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Posted by jeff on March 13, 2006 10:53 AM | Permalink

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Posted by: abortion at June 5, 2007 05:01 AM

Jeff,

I think that the bottom line for exploiting the benefits of IP communications is that it can provide very flexible, personalized access to people rather to just a device or a location. Ultimately that is what person-to-person communications are all about. Whether it is a real-time voice connection, a messaging connection, or the logical combination of the two to effect two-way communications, that's what the technology is all about.

Sorry that I can't be at your party in Chicago, but keep up the good work!

Posted by: Art Rosenberg at April 26, 2006 04:06 PM

Jeff, As one who was affected by Katrina, I also used my remote 800 based VoiceMail to leave info. My cell wasn't always working. However, one thing in this Hurricane was that my home was completely submerged for days and those of us that had to leave in a very short amount of time we have to remember to take our VoIP Adapters with us when we flee in such a hurry. I did use the Vonage softphone on my laptop when I got to a location where I had Broadband access. On a side note, It took Vonage 5+ days for them to send me a free replacement which I greatly appreciated. Primus/Lingo never offered to do the same and still continued to charge me for 4+ months of unused service. Primus/Lingo CSRs thought I was making it all up when I reported it lost in the storm which at the time was underwater and wouldn't disconnect my service. REALLY Bad customer Service.

Posted by: Gary at March 14, 2006 06:04 PM

This is a great article. I am new to your blog and i like what I see. I look forward to your future work.

Posted by: NY Cellphone Savant at March 13, 2006 02:42 PM

March 13, 2006

Pulver/Evslin Petition to the FCC on Post-Disaster Communications:

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