WASHINGTON-The Network Reliability and Interoperability Council is recommending that wireless carriers voluntarily report when a mobile telephone switching office fails, preventing transmission of new calls for 30 minutes or more.
Making the reporting requirement voluntary is a win for the wireless industry, which had worried NRIC would mandate such reporting.
“We’re very glad that NRIC is not going with mandatory reporting. There was a serious possibility of it going down that path,” said Harold Salters, director of government relations for the Personal Communications Industry Association.
NRIC is an FCC advisory committee chartered to examine network outages and network interoperability issues. It was created in 1992 as the Network Reliability Council, and the interoperability function was added in 1996.
The use of MTSOs for reporting purposes will make it difficult for someone other than a carrier to know when a report should be filed, Salters admitted, since MTSOs are set neither by geography nor subscribers.
Wireline carriers are required to report whenever 30,000 access lines are out for more than 30 minutes, but similar reports are not required for wireless carriers.
Salters does not believe reporting is necessary in the wireless industry because of competition. “Competition is the best way to prevent outages,” he said.
The lack of wireless reporting became evident in May 1997, when the Galaxy IV satellite spun out of control causing most paging networks to go dark. At that time, FCC Chairman William Kennard said he would ask NRIC to address the problem.
NRIC’s intention to mandate reporting requirements became apparent earlier this year when wireless carriers received a survey requesting reporting information.
A draft report on the recommendations is expected to be posted on the NRIC Web site Nov. 23, with a final report posted on Dec. 16, said P.J. Aduskevicz of AT&T Corp.
NRIC will hold a Y2K post-mortem conference call Jan. 6. NRIC IV has been tasked with evaluating the readiness of the telecommunications network for the date change from 1999 to 2000 when some computers may malfunction if they read the date as 1900 instead of 2000.
