WASHINGTON-The Alliance for Telecommunications Solutions submitted a report last week to the Federal Communications Commission indicating no Year 2000-related problems were discovered in recent testing of the public switched telephone network.
The interoperability testing included wireless to wireline call completion. These wireless/wireline tests were conducted by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. More than 825 tests were carried out, said CTIA in a statement.
The millennium bug results from a computer programming decision made decades ago to make the year-date field only two digits and program the computer to assume the first two digits were “19.” It is feared at the start of 2000 computers will crash or work improperly because the computer will think it is the year 1900 instead of 2000.
The report was submitted on the heels of last month’s report from the Federal Communications Commission which questioned the wireless industry’s readiness to combat the millennium bug. The conclusions of the FCC report were based on a low response-rate to a survey on Y2K readiness. The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau said the results were misleading, noting the low-response rate was at the cut-off date but that surveys still “were coming in every day.”
ATIS also said the testing indicated the PSTN’s “congestion control measures are prepared for the first ‘mass calling’ event of the next millennium-the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, a time when a higher than usual volume of telephone and network usage is anticipated.”
Anticipating there might be a congestion problem on New Year’s Eve if too many people attempt to use the phone to see if it works, FCC Commissioner Michael Powell, who heads the agency’s Y2K efforts, said last month that Americans should restrict their calling at that moment to only necessary calls.
