The draft National Telecom Policy 2011 (NTP 2011) will
enable the government to mandate telecom service providers to offer alternative
reliable means of communication at the time of disaster by creating appropriate
regulatory framework.
The government is set to prescribe sectoral standard
operating procedures for effective and early mitigation during disasters and
emergencies.
Till now Indian operators did not focus on ensuring
communication services during natural calamities such as flood, earth
quake, etc.
India has a role model to follow. ITU dispatched
emergency telecommunications equipment to areas affected by the tsunami that
struck the coastal areas of Japan. Last year in Indonesia, ITU deployed a
hybrid of 40 broadband satellite terminals in terms to restore communication
links in the aftermath of a tsunami caused by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake and a
volcanic eruption that hit the Indonesian archipelago in two separate
incidents.
In India, during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, phone
lines were down. People used social media and micro blogging to keep nation
posted about it.
During 9/11 in the US, there were several communications
failures at the federal government level. But mobile phones and in-plane credit
card phones played a significant role during and after the attack as hijacked
passengers were able to call their family authorities to notify what was
happening.
There were mistakes of US during 9/11 and Hurricane
Irene, as the EAS (Emergency Alert System) was not activated during
attack. EAS was put up in 1997 as national warning system of the US, which was
supposed to alert the public of local weather emergencies, was designed to
enable the President of US to speak to United States within ten minutes.
AT&T, US’s largest service provider, did not charge consumers for making
domestic calls originating from the New York City area for the days following
9/11.
The US is focusing on addressing 9/11 kind of issues. The
government is encouraging operators to spend funds to meet crisis. For
instance, TeleCommunication Systems announced that ClearTalk Wireless selected
the TCS-hosted Commercial Mobile Alert System service in US which will meet the
Federal Communications Commission’s April 2012 deadline for providing
subscribers with automatic alerts in during crisis.
Moreover, U.S. government has
Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) which is a White House
directed emergency phone service provided by the National Communications System
(NCS) in the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications Division, National
Protection and Programs Directorate, Department of Homeland Security.
GETS provides emergency access and priority processing in
the local and long distance segments of the Public Switched Telephone Network
(PSTN) which is intended to be used during crisis situation when the PSTN is
congested and the probability of completing a call over normal or other
alternate telecommunication means lacks.
It is unfortunate that mobile phones did not work in Sikkim during an emergency. Leading operators such as
Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, Idea
Cellular, BSNL, S Tel and Vodafone are present in the North East. Their combined
mobile user base is around 8 million.
India can come-up with a system like CMAS as India is
facing incidents such as earthquake, floods, blast at Delhi or Mumbai etc.
By Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
