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ASSESSMENT OF NETWORK ACCESS
The NRIC report also provided insight on the readiness of customer premises equipment (CPE) and systems that interface with the PSTN. Since its last report, the Council reported it had found no major problems or industry-wide issues that cannot be handled with planning including 911 call processing. The report stated that while most private data networks may require fairly extensive upgrades, software upgrades, which are most common, can often be distributed through a companys internal network while firmware upgrades sometimes require CPE to be returned to factories for appropriate upgrades. As a result, the NRIC report pointed out that individual user assessment and testing is extremely important.
In the three months since its last report, NRIC has found that 34 percent (up from 10 percent reported in the previous quarter) of Public Safety Answering Positions (PSAPs), utilized by local governments in responding to 911 calls, have achieved Y2K readiness. In addition, 47 percent of the remaining PSAPs are in the process of achieving Y2K readiness.
While this is an improvement, the NRIC has recommended that non-compliant PSAP owners take immediate action to achieve Y2K readiness, that telephone companies begin sharing appropriate data to help these PSAP owners achieve Y2K readiness and that the FCC begin promoting the availability of funding for municipalities with limited financial resources. It was also reported that the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) has done a survey of PSAPs Y2K readiness and their data indicated 91 percent of PSAPs across the nation will be Y2K ready by January 1, 2000. At the NRIC meeting, it was reported that FCC Commissioner Michael Powell had sent letters to directors of emergency services in each state to raise their awareness of the Year 2000 issue and the potential impact the century date change might have on PSAPs.
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Now, look how much was devoted to contingency planning:
ASSESSMENT OF INDUSTRY-WIDE CONTINGENCY PLANNING
In its report, NRIC also reviewed industry-wide Y2K contingency planning efforts. In a Contingency Planning Workshop, conducted on April 27, 1999, for the telecommunications industry, the NRIC collaborated with the USTA to provide specifics on awareness and understanding of Y2K contingency planning. The NRIC also reported that this committee had developed a set of Contingency Planning Guidelines that were available on the NRIC web site ().
That's it. This was not a clip, but the entire contingency planning section. What do we have here: a one day workshop where people collaborated, and a committe developed a set of guidelines that they put on their website.
-- James Chancellor, PE (publicworks1@bluebonnet.net), October 25, 1999