The federal Wireless Priority Service (WPS) is working on includi...
The federal Wireless Priority Service (WPS) is working on including SMS and text messaging, probably in 2009 or 2010, an official said Thurs. The program gives priority to cellphone calls by emergency officials and others to deal with network…
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congestion during emergencies (CD May 26 p8). It’s working with 35 businesses, volunteering services, “looking at the process to do this” extension, said Vernon Mosley, chief engineer for WPS and the corresponding Govt. Emergency Telecom Service (GETS) for wireline calls. He said at a Homeland Security Journal emergency communications conference in San Jose that Sprint Nextel will start offering WPS next quarter, rounding out a roster of 5 national wireless carriers. Network-level preemption to increase call completion would require a Presidential override of FCC policy -- and in the Gulf hurricanes, performance wouldn’t have improved much, because most routing failures were caused by network damage, not congestion, Mosley said in answer to a question. GETS has 150,000 users, Mosley said. That’s 10,000 more than it had Dec. 1. He said all 911 public service access points (PSAPs) “should have available to them GETS,” for callbacks when calls are cut off. The services fall under the National Communications System in the Homeland Security Dept.