NCJ Number
213543
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 73 Issue: 3 Dated: March 2006 Pages: 37-38,40,41
Date Published
March 2006
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article describes the Government Emergency Telephone Services (GETS), the Wireless Priority Services (WPS), and the Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP), which provide priority communication services to emergency personnel at all governmental levels in case of large-scale emergencies in which traditional landline telephone circuits and cellular-type mobile services are clogged or damaged.
Abstract
GETS is a nationwide landline priority telecommunications service that currently serves just over 110,000 users. It is designed to make maximum use of all available telephone resources if outages occur. Under GETS, emergency personnel have access and priority in the use of local and long-distance segments of the public telephone network. WPS is the cellular companion to the GETS program. It provides cellular telephone users priority treatment when they experience high levels of congestion. In emergencies that involve damaged landline networks, cellular telephones often provide the primary means of communications. WPS allows authorized personnel to gain access to the next available cellular radio channel in order to make calls during an emergency. WPS, when used in conjunction with GETS, ensures priority treatment in both the landline and cellular portions of the public telephone network. TSP is used for the emergency provision and restoration of emergency telecommunications services. A TSP assignment ensures that the TSP circuit will receive priority attention from the service vendor before any non-TSP circuit. There were 3,270 TSP requests during Hurricane Katrina, and 121 TSP requests were processed for Hurricane Rita. In order to better understand these communications programs and how they link together in the National Response Plan's Emergency Support Function 2 (communications), first responders should attend a telecommunications emergency response training seminar in one of the 10 Federal response regions.