Phone Service a Lifeline for First Responders
Client: Department of Homeland Security/National Communications System
Challenge: Develop a service that allows emergency calls to go through, even when a crisis or natural disaster overwhelms local land and wireless networks.
Solution: GETS and WPS, priority telecommunications services that bypass congestion for authorized callers.
Results: Even with high levels of network congestion, emergency managers and first responders can place emergency calls within seconds.
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When a tornado ripped through Enterprise, Alabama, in March 2007, every second was critical for first responders on the scene.
“We knew we had children trapped in the local high school,” recalls John James, a fire service development coordinator for the area. “We needed to call in the National Guard and also contact our employees for deployment. Because the power had been damaged, our normal phone lines were failing.”
Every second is critical
His team turned to GETS, the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, which CSC helped develop, implement and manage for the National Communications System. GETS provides priority telephone service for 200,000 national security and emergency preparedness users in times of crisis.
“Without GETS, I truly believe we would have been seriously delayed in getting anything accomplished, which could have meant failure for our lifesaving mission,” James says. “Had I not been able to access a landline phone through GETS and establish direct contact with the field teams, we would have had to wait hours until the main telecommunications systems were able to handle the call volume.”
Emergency responders given priority
GETS, and its cellular telephone companion, the Wireless Priority Service (WPS), are nationwide priority telephone services intended for use during high network congestion, as in a natural disaster or terrorist attack, when phone networks can become overwhelmed by anxious callers or network damage.
It is precisely these times when emergency workers need calls to go through. GETS and WPS give these authorized callers priority access to the resources in the public switched telephone network (PSTN). According to Tom Otto, CSC director of the GETS/WPS program, the two services complement other communications systems, working together to give users additional options in a crisis. “A lot of the people that we deal with are first responders or emergency managers and they have a wide variety of tools, including public safety radios and cellular telephones,” says Otto. “GETS is another tool in their communications toolbox so they can complete a call when they absolutely have to.”