WASHINGTON—The independent panel reviewing the communications disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina told the Federal Communications Commission it should encourage, not require, various changes to help prevent a similar communications disaster in the future.
In a report filed with the FCC last week, the Independent Panel Reviewing the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Communications Network made 18 recommendations in four categories, but none of them suggest to the commission that it require specific changes. Instead the agency is told to encourage various changes.
“I am particularly pleased to see the independent panel’s recommendation to provide a readiness checklist for the communications industry, to inform public-safety community about technologies to improve the operability and interoperability of their communications, to strengthen the resiliency of public-safety answering points and other 911 infrastructure, and to take actions to ensure the public gets timely information in times of emergency,” said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.
The FCC is asking for comment on the report and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said the comments should focus not on whether the agency will implement the recommendations, but rather how.
“The one fiasco everyone agreed on—whatever else Katrina did to New Orleans, it had clearly broken down all standard modes of communications,” said Copps, quoting historian Douglas Brinkley.
“I think that the central question raised by the report is how—and not whether—the communications industry should begin to incorporate more rigorous standards into how it constructs and maintains networks,” added Copps.
The FCC is also encouraged to work with federal, state and local authorities to enact the recommendations.
In one area, the Katrina panel did go beyond encouraging by telling the FCC to develop credentialing guidelines. The lack of providing proper credentials seems to be the tip of the access problems experienced by telecommunication companies after Katrina.
At a Senate hearing earlier this year, a representative of the National Communications Service, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, said that the recently-developed National Response Plan does not deal with restoring infrastructure because NCS believes credentialing is a function of state and local government.
In addition to developing national credentialing requirements and process guidelines, the Katrina panel said it “supports the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee’s recommendation that telecom-infrastructure providers and their contracted workers be afforded emergency responder status, but recommends that it be broadened to include all communications-infrastructure providers.”
The panel also suggests that the communications industry develop a readiness checklist that would include pre-positioning equipment. The Katrina panel recommends caching radio-frequency equipment, tower system components, power-system components and fuel. Additionally, the communications sector, both private and public, should conduct training exercises and develop formal business continuity plans.
The current telecommunications-reform legislation in the Senate provides for money to be used to contract for pre-positioned equipment for 10 regional Federal Emergency Management Agency offices. These contracts are envisioned to be virtual so that the equipment that is provided is the most up-to-date and not old equipment sitting in warehouses.
Under the interoperability section, the Katrina panel says the FCC should “expeditiously approve any requests by broadcasters to terminate analog service in the 700 MHz band before the end of the digital TV transition in 2009 in order to allow public-safety users immediate access to this spectrum.” The Association of Public-safety Communications Officials endorsed this recommendation.
