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| Home National Communications System Looking at Next Phase of WPS Deployment Arlington, Va., April 5, 2004 - Officials
with the National Communications System (NCS) are looking not only
to bring its current WPS carrier (T-Mobile) to full operating capability
this summer, but also to expand Wireless Priority Service (WPS)
to other Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) national
wireless carriers. “By the summer of 2003, we had deployed that [IOC capability] throughout the T-Mobile network, said Graves, except for those areas where T-Mobile roams – especially California and the Carolinas.” According to Graves, T-Mobile has been installing the full operating capability (FOC) software since January. He said the FOC software includes the ability to perform trunk queuing in a mobile switching center for trunks to the network. This will provide users a priority to keep a call “alive” when there is congestion on the trunks from the mobile switching center. “It is capability we don’t have everywhere right now with the IOC,” said Graves. “When you have widespread outages where everyone is demanding mobile service in an area – such as the blackout we had in the Northeastern United States last August – the primary congestion may not be the cell site, which is usually the case, but the switch trunking. The FOC set of features will eliminate that problem.” Graves said FOC software became available in January from Ericsson and Nortel, two of the switch manufacturers that serve not only T-Mobile’s wireless network, but also other potential WPS carriers. T-Mobile is deploying the FOC software during the first and second quarter of this year. Graves said T-Mobile would have most of its end-to-end capability available by the middle of 2004. In reaching full operating capability, Graves applauded the efforts of Ericsson, Nortel, Nokia, and Motorola for their dedication to developing the software for the WPS project. “Because of the $73 million shortfall in funding in FY03 (Fiscal Year 2003), we had to defer a number of things – including the FOC phase of the program,” said Graves. “Nortel and Ericsson had already made substantial progress when the FOC was deferred so they continued their work anyway. As a result, Graves said the two companies delivered according to the original schedule, which will allow about two-thirds of T-Mobile’s network to complete full operating capability deployment this summer.
WPS is a service available only to designated individuals at all government levels: national security, emergency responders, and private sector critical infrastructure leaders and decision makers, as approved by Federal Communications Commission Rules and Requirements and the NCS. When trying to make a call in times of emergency or natural disaster, national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) users will have the ability to gain priority access to the next available cellular channel to place their call. Authorized WPS users need only dial *272 and then their destination number. Graves said this service would greatly enhance a caller’s ability to complete wireless calls during critical times and communicate vital decisions and reports during emergency situations. In concept, WPS is an extension of GETS, the NCS emergency
communications program that currently provides wireline priority
service to over 80,000 users. Under GETS, eligible users with GETS
calling cards can call a designated access number, input their GETS
personal identification number, then dial the number they need during
an emergency. User calls then receive priority handling on the public
network – a process that gives emergency responders the next
available phone line without pre-empting calls already in progress.
While T-Mobile has done a superb job of deploying and promoting WPS through its network, Graves also said T-Mobile was never intended to be the only WPS GSM carrier. The goal has been to include as many of the major wireless carriers as possible, specifically, Cingular, AT&T Wireless and Nextel. Both Cingular and AT&T Wireless were predominately time division multiple access (TDMA) carriers, but have been installing GSM. Graves said that both companies are about two years into their implementations and predicts that they will finish their GSM infrastructure in a few years. Nextel is an iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) carrier that uses GSM for connecting to the public network. Graves said although the NCS has been in negotiations with the three carriers for some time, the NCS integration contractor (CSC) has recently signed contracts with Cingular and Nextel and is in final negotiation with AT&T Wireless. Signing the contracts for WPS does not mean these companies will immediately begin deploying WPS. “It’s like the roll out of GETS,” said Graves. He said companies are rolling out the change over a period of time – as it is a business problem for them. “Everywhere the carriers have a mobile switching center supporting GSM, we will roll out our features and functions,“ he said. Once the other GSM carriers’ tests are completed, Graves said they would start rollout based on where the WPS priority software is physically available. He said geography or coverage area has nothing to do with where each carrier first deploys WPS – the rollout doesn’t necessarily mean an East Coast to West Coast deployment. “When we deployed the initial capability with T-Mobile we rolled out on the East Coast first because Ericsson had the IOC software available a little sooner than the other switch manufacturers, and many of their switches are on the East Coast, “ said Graves. “If Erickson switches had been predominant on the West Coast, the West Coast would have been first.”
As the program approaches the second year of service, Graves said WPS has had its ups and downs, but that these are all part of the growing pains involved in deploying a new service. “We’ve had a number of successes,” said Graves, “but we also haven’t had, thank God, anything on the scale of 9-11, which might have severely stressed the IOC capability. The NCS continues to solicit user feedback about WPS from its customers and will continue asking for feedback as WPS expands to other carriers. Graves said the NCS – through its WPS user support program – continues to publish news notes on WPS, which is distributed to a large variety of users in their Federal, state, and local audiences, as well as the NCS industry partners. “We have had some episodic information feedback from users about successful uses,” he said. “However, we usually don’t hear about ‘one-sies and two-sies’ – from people who use one of our priority services. We hear from organizations and we’ve had some very positive experiences reported.” One of the significant problems that Graves said the NCS faces is that not many of the potential WPS users want to change their cellular carrier just to have the WPS capability. “What we’re finding is that people are interested in WPS if they can just add it to their established service – therefore, we think that once we have a WPS capability with those other GSM carriers – in addition to T-Mobile – we’ll see a rise in the rate of customer acquisition for WPS.” Initially, during 2002, the NCS operated an “immediate” WPS capability for which the Government bought around 3,000 T-Mobile cell phones and Globalstar satellite phones for Washington and New York and provided them without cost to users. However, Graves said that even with having WPS phones provided free to New York and Washington users, people couldn’t use them for regular business because the WPS subscriptions were restricted to emergency calls only. When the IOC software became available, the restrictions were lifted but the subscriptions were transferred, over time, to the users’ organizations and, in many cases, the users continued to carry two instruments, a significant irritant. Again, multiple carriers will help in this regard. The Northeast power blackout last August showed that using WPS can be difficult when the cell towers that support wireless communications lose power. In the initial hours of the blackout, Graves said WPS worked as designed. However, as the cell tower batteries lost power, WPS users – like other wireless subscribers – were unable to connect to their parties because there was no power to keep the cell towers operational. Graves said this isn’t a problem with WPS, per se, but one challenge the carriers with cell towers must address in the event of future power failures. Another challenge is tracking how well WPS is working. Graves said the NCS would be acquiring the capability – called operational measurements – to verify service performance. Graves said the NCS will have two ways to analyze WPS performance. The first is a call detail record, which is a report on each WPS call that is made. “We already get that from T-Mobile,” said Graves, “and we expect to get the same WPS usage information from the other carriers as they come aboard.“ In the future, Graves said the NCS would have a second means of data collection. He said information could be collected by using the mobile switching centers to obtain information about the number of calls and specific handling that went on with a call, such as whether or not it went into a queue. “Most of the operational measurements are in the FOC phases,” said Graves. “It’s important to have feedback and information about the calls for measurement purposes, but it’s not as critical to have that data as it is to have the priority features themselves. A well-tested priority feature set gives us initial confidence that, whether we measure or not, the service is going to work.”
While the NCS efforts to deploy WPS in other GSM carriers continues, Graves said the agency is also continuing its efforts to develop and publish specifications for code division multiple access (CDMA) carriers, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS. “We’ve said all along that we want to have as many wireless carriers participating in the program as possible,” said Graves. “The goal is to provide emergency responders with priority access with a variety of standards that support a common goal – successfully completing emergency calls during an emergency. We believe all wireless carriers – GSM and CDMA – have a vital role in making wireless priority service a success. ”Because of budget constraints in fiscal year 2003, the NCS had to choose between GSM and CDMA platforms and decided to develop GSM technology first,” said Graves. However, while the NCS is deploying WPS with T-Mobile and the other GSM carriers, Graves said work has not stopped between NCS engineering staff and manufacturers to support CDMA technology. “We are proceeding to develop and publish the specifications for CDMA and they’ve all been very active in the process, “ said Graves. “We all want to make sure that we have a complete specification in place as we contract with the vendors for CDMA development.”
Graves said he is very optimistic about funding future WPS efforts in the FY05 budget. “We were recently given an FY04 advance allocation to get started on CDMA, “ said Graves. “Our experience with GSM will serve us well and we should have an initial CDMA capability by the end of 2005 or early 2006.”
The NCS consists of 23 Federal member departments and agencies and is responsible for ensuring the availability of a viable national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications infrastructure. The Secretary of Homeland Security is the Executive Agent for the NCS and the Office of the Manager, NCS, is part of the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate.
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