The plans would help companies in a crisis contact and work with partner firms or competitors to keep services running for customers.
The procedures were developed by a council of more than 50 industry officials formed by the FCC in January to recommend ways to strengthen communications networks to resist attack. The group is called the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council.
"When a disaster happens or the nation is under attack and the telecommunications infrastructure is threatened, chances are pretty high it's going to be more than one service provider that will be affected," said Jeff Goldthorp, chief of the FCC's network technology division. "There's a need for these companies to get in touch with each other quickly, and in an emergency like that every second counts."
The new procedures will allow company officials to call a central directory of emergency contact numbers so they can reach their peers without getting bogged down in voice mail or other delays, Goldthorp said. For example, a telephone company whose services are knocked out could get help from a rival carrier to reroute signals and let customer calls go through.
The council also created a mutual-aid agreement that companies can sign in advance or during emergencies. The agreement lays out the business and legal details of helping another company, to allow for a faster response.
"The last thing you want to do is get attorneys on the phone in the middle of a crisis," Goldthorp said.
Four companies -- AT&T, BellSouth, SBC and Qwest -- already have signed the agreement, and others are expected to follow, said Pamela Stegora-Axberg, a Qwest vice president and a member of the council.
The council plans to address the engineering aspects of strengthening communications networks later this year.
Cellular phone use overwhelmed wireless networks in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington and prevented police and officials from making critical calls.
In New York, many cell phones stopped working, in part because the transmission towers were destroyed along with the twin towers. One Verizon switching office was destroyed, and another, which handled about 300,000 telephone lines, was badly damaged.
The destruction of the World Trade Center also demolished television transmitters serving all seven local New York television stations. Only WCBS stayed on the air because it had a backup transmitter on the Empire State Building.
A separate industry council is examining how to strengthen radio and broadcast television systems.
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