Questions Raised About 911, Cellular Reliability

When Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast last month, it caused billions of dollars of damage to homes and businesses, but also damaged and knocked out dozens of communications systems for reporting emergencies and managing public safety personnel. Now, legislators and the media are criticizing the reliability of cellular, 911 and public safety radio systems, and asking how the systems can be made more robust. A long article in the Washington Post newspaper notes there have been 11 outages of 911 systems since July 2010 in the Virginia and Maryland region, all operated by Verizon. The company handles 911 routing for 1,800 public safety answering points (PSAP) in 12 states, and says that any downtime is a very small percentage of the system’s total operating hours. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has opened an inquiry into how public communications systems operated during Hurricane Sandy, including 911 networks. The newspaper interviewed experts and reviewed Verizon records, and learned that many outages involved multiple failures of equipment or systems. A story on the ProPublica Web site examines how cellular carriers have resisted call for the FCC to regulate how calls—both 911 and routine—should be handled during emergencies. So far, the FCC has allowed the carriers latitude to devise they own policies. However, the story says, critics say Americans’ dependence on cellular phones now requires that the FCC step in a insure wireless calls can be made even during a major emergency.