WASHINGTON-FCC Commissioner Michael Powell warned members of the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council last week the millennium bug was a special problem that requires everyone to work together. For that reason, Powell said, information cannot be kept from the Federal Communications Commission.
If companies have problems with that, Powell said he would personally talk to the telecommunications companies’ chief executives. The problem arises, Powell told RCR later, because the telephone companies have permanent employees who work at the National Coordinating Center, which operates under the National Security Council. Since NCC is in operation all of the time and was not created to deal with the millennium bug, there may be times when information does not need to be shared with the FCC. The Y2K problem is not one of those times, he said, so “we have to pry some of that away.”
If talking to the CEOs would not work, Powell said he could ask the White House to intervene. Powell indicated he is not sure if Y2K information is being withheld from the FCC, but felt it necessary to elevate the issue so none would be.
NRIC met last week to receive another in a series of reports on the readiness of the telecommunications network for the millennium date change.
There remains some concern small- and medium-sized companies are not ready for the date change and could be struck by the millennium bug. “There is definitely concern about medium and small carriers,” said P. Sahni of AT&T Corp.
Perhaps because of the suspected unreadiness of some companies or perhaps because the date is fast approaching, Powell said it is time to do contingency planning.
“We are beginning to enter the final and probably most important component of our effort. The government has begun to shift its focus and resources … to development of its own contingency planning … Efforts are underway to set up a White House response center … We will be a component of that here at the FCC. We will have our own operations center … Many in the industry will be hearing from us on how we report information up the chain. [Contingency planning] is the key focus of our efforts,” Powell said.
In addition to the NRIC meeting, The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions said no Y2K anomalies were found when testing was completed on the frame relay network. The frame relay network, which is a data-exclusive network, is used by financial institutions to make more than $1 trillion in transactions daily, said Nancy Pierce, ATIS director of industry forums.
ATIS said in April that it found no Y2K-related anomalies when it tested the public switched telephone network-including wireless to wireline and wireline to wireless calls. It will now begin testing international calling. No mobile phone carriers are expected to participate in this test, but fixed wireless carrier WinStar Communications Inc. will.
