Cell Phone Priority Use Considered

[HellFire_001]

This seems like a good idea but how exactly would this work?

I mean is, what is a priority? Is one person calling home to tell a loved one they are safe more important than another person calling home?
i understand fire/police importance here
but what about

volunteer firefighters?
fire police?
red cross workers?
other volunteer services?

they need to stay in contact too do they get a priority number?


what I am trying to get at is everyone thinks their call is important. Which leads to my next question of someone can't get a call through (in a non emergency) so they use a priority number to get through. What would be the punishment?

[EFDems841]

The way I see it is all cellphones in emergency vehicles, or officers phones should have the code programmed in. During incidents, media personel call their newsrooms on cell phones and leave the connection open, thus causing a shortage of available connections for REAL calls. Ihave run into situations even in the rural area where I live where the cell services were busy and we were on an incident where we NEEDED to make cell based calls instead of going over the air (these incidents always seem to happen at peak cell usage times..must be Murphy's Law). I thought this program was already in effect, I'll have to check with our local cell company about it..

[Dalmatian90]

Every cell phone has a unique number, called an Electronic Serial Number. This I'm certain is the "code" their talking about in the article.

On the company side, that ESN is paired with a phone number -- calls to the that number are directed to that ESN. People who "steal" cellular service (much less common in these days of digital phones) grab the ESN that's being broadcast, and program it onto a new phone, fooling the cell phone company.

Priority of service simply says these are the ESNs I will allow onto my system. Without knowing more details than the brief news article, it sounds like the plan is for Verizon to deny service to everyone BUT that selected group of ESNs -- that's why everyone but the selected gov't officials get a busy tone. It would be the same as if you don't pay your bill and get cut off -- just this time they cut everyone off except those selected phones.

Matt,
who many years ago worked for Bell Atlantic Mobile.

[EFDems841]

Dalmation, is something like this in effect already? I've heard talk about it in the past and am just wondering. I didn't evem think about the ESN being the "code" thought it would be like a pin-code that was programmed in. The ESN is an even better idea.

[Dalmatian90]

Cellular companies have had the ability to implement systems like this since the inception of the technology. Whether and how a company implements has been left to company by company.

Many of the capabilities where/have been downplayed over the years for fear of creating a "Big Brother" feeling in the public.

[ffguy083]

This is a tremendous idea. Unfortunately it will be abused. Politicians, every Fire Officer, Chiefs, Police Officers, Red Cross, The Mayors friends, soon it will become a perk to be abused, much like Police and FF speeding when driving on the Highway (another discussion).

Anyway, it would end up being how connected you are to if you get 'the phone'. Then you end up handing it to Mrs. Jones who is so distraught, and really needs to call Johnny to let him know she is ok....

Now... if there is one phone for each Agency to use, kept in the command vehicle, it might work. But from the politics I've seen soon the Chief needs one... thn the Ops Chief gets one... then.... you get the idea.

I would imagine in Utah it's gonna be pretty strict...

One final thought.... why doesn't Verizon increase their system capacity to handle emergencies. We've made the Bells do that.... hmmm... maybe there is more to the story than meets the eye.....

[Dalmatian90]

Systems expansion is limited generally by two factors.

One is simple finances -- in rural areas, you may only be able to justify, say, 12 "channels" on a tower. Once those twelve are filled, that's it.

With land-line phones, rural areas are subsidized (Dal whips his most recent bill out of his briefcase...)Universal Service Fund, Local $0.64, Universal Service Fund, Interstate, $0.68. Plus the Connecticut Service Fund of $0.05 that's at least $1.37 every phone bill pays each month to ensure adequate rural phone service. On a sidenote, there's also a $0.28 charge that pays for 911 and helps fund the regional dispatch centers in Connecticut.

The second limitation is technology and popularity. No matter how many cell sites you build, in a major incident like 9-11 the technology is so popular you will still overwhelm the maximum density of sites each with the maximum density of channels!

This isn't very different from land line phones. You can still get inter-state "busy" signals on Thanksgiving and Christmas when all the kids left in New England try to call Mom & Dad in Florida. Or for that matter, your local phone company switch can only handle a fraction of the potential phone calls at any time -- if everyone picked up their phone receivers at the same time, the great majority would receive busy signals.

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There are many neat and good things we can do to improve emergency telecommunications though.

One is to have equipment on hand so that POTS (Plain Old-fashion Telephone System) lines can be tapped in an emergency. In most cases, it's a simple as running a wire into a business and tieing into their phone system. It's not tough to train someone how to do it. Then you're not at the mercy of wireless sites.

As incidents continue in length, most phone companies have mobile equipement they can deploy to bring into play. These range from mobile switching offices designed originally to replace a local switching office that, oh, burns down to mobile Wireless Phone sites that can be set up to bring in extra capacity where needed.

One of the neatest vehicles I've ever seen was NYNEX's (now Verizon's) Massachussets Mobile 911. It is a huge vehicle that could replace any 911 center in the state -- just drop in place, sit the telecommunicators down, and your back in business if you've lost your own dispatch center.

I believe we (the fire service) should also be pursuing a nation-wide policy with the new 700mhz frequencies being opened up to develop a nationally interoperable fire communications system, designed from the start with interoperability Local/County/Region/State/National level. Such a plan would not only have national frequencies used to coordinate out of area units, but the radios themselves from whatever manufacturer should have a common interface so they can be cloned and/or reprogrammed in the field, so resources arriving from afar can all have the radios quickly programmed to the needs of the incident.