FCC head: Hurricane shows need for redundant telecom

IDG News Service - Widespread telephone and broadcast outages caused by Hurricane Katrina show that the U.S. needs more reliable and redundant communications systems, including a better emergency warning system, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin called for the U.S. government to incorporate the Internet into an emergency warning system that traditionally has been carried over television and radio stations. And he said telecommunications providers need to "take full advantage" of IP-based technologies to enhance their networks.
An emergency warning system "should incorporate the Internet, which was designed by the military for its robust network-redundancy functionalities, and other advantages in technology so that officials can reach large numbers of people simultaneously through different communications media," Martin told the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Emergency responders need more radio spectrum to communicate with one another, Martin said, and they need new technologies like so-called smart radios that can jump to different frequencies when some telecommunications providers aren't functioning, as happened when Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area Aug. 29.
BellSouth Corp., the major provider of land-line phone service in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, lost connections on close to 2.5 million telephone lines following Katrina, said Bill Smith, the company's chief technology officer. As of Tuesday, about 200,000 lines were still disconnected, he said.
About 20 million telephone calls didn't go through the day after Katrina struck, Martin said. The hurricane knocked out 38 emergency 911 response centers, three of which remained down yesterday, he said. About 1,600 wireless telephone transmission sites were taken out by the hurricane, and 600 remain down -- although all wireless switching centers in the area are now operational, he said.
Four television stations in the Gulf Coast region remain off the air, while three have resumed broadcasting, Martin said. Thirty-six radio stations remain off the air, while several others have are back in operation.
Senators questioned why emergency 911 response centers didn't reroute calls to other centers as the hurricane approached. The technology exists, Martin said, but many emergency response centers didn't have a plan for doing so.
Martin noted that satellite-based Internet and wireless phone providers weren't affected by the hurricane, and Jeffrey Citron, chairman and CEO of voice-over-IP (VoIP) provider Vonage Holdings Corp. said his service was largely unaffected for people who had access to VoIP phones and electricity, because the Internet stayed up in many places. Pressed by senators about the lessons of satellite access staying up, Martin said the U.S. needs to incorporate satellite into emergency