Verizon throws network capacity at emergency commitment

17 Dec 2001 at 11:04 GMT Timo Poropudas

Verizon Wireless has run into problems in implementing a priority call service in its networks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City. Verizon, the biggest American mobile operator, has made a commitment to federal officials to have a priority status up and tuning for emergency services. The deadline went by on Dec. 10.

Verizon is trying to meet the commitment by throwing extra network capacity at the problem so all the calls will get through and the network will not collapse or slow down like it did on the days following the September 11 attack in New York City.

Meanwhile the Deutsche Telecom owned for VoiceStream Wireless seems to fair a little better in fulfilling the commitment. It plans to use its GPRS packet network where it is possible to prioritise traffic to provide emergency connections to officials.

The emergency communications demands on wireless operators come as an unexpected technological demand since telecom vendors have developed special networks to be used by emergency and law enforcement officials. The private mobile radio (PMR) class of services has been standardized by European ETSI is it’s TETRA specification. TETRA networks have turned out to be particularly strong area for Nokia but also Motorola has TETRA products. Most of the large telecom vendors have offered their PMR networks already for years.

U.S. has also set requirements for handset location information to mobile operators. Only operators can tackle this E911 capability since the emergency site can be located only by the determining the location of the handset that being used to report the emergency.