AT&T insights on FirstNet performance recovery efforts after Nashville explosion
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mmckenna
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From the article...
"“I can tell you from 30 years of responding to critical incidents, they don’t generally fit into a nice silo, and so we're seeing two critical infrastructures affected here, really, depending on how it cascaded out,” he said. “Are there other vulnerabilities like this? Absolutely, there are ... But I do think that AT&T responded to it and got control of it pretty quickly, given the cascading effect of what they were dealing with.”"
It's hard to have a response plan for every possible scenario.
As for how to address it, that's always happening. NG911 will address a lot of the 911 failures. We just need States to stop raiding the 911 funds whenever they feel like it.
Migration to packet switched systems will allow redundancy. As much as I love circuit switched systems, the writing is on the wall. We've got to redundant routers at all our sites at work with multiple alternate paths as well as multiple alternate connections to the outside world. Only outages we have now are when they specifically take down routers for major upgrades/replacements, and even then we can limit the impact.
And any agency that only relies on any form of cellular network for their voice communications needs to have some management changes. It's what happens when the bean counters run the show.
mmckenna
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As for "How to secure them", maybe start with psychiatric holds on those that honestly believe the world is run by lizard people. Most of the conspiracy theory stuff just screams of psychiatric issues.
monitor142
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This scenario of redundancy (alternate paths) and hardening brings back those fiber cuts that took place in NorCal a few years ago taking out a significant amount of 911 services, along with many other services. Oops...
I'm a convert to FirstNet from AT&T and it's the same old bag. The pricing plans and real unlimited data with no throttling are nice. At the end of the day my P25 system will still do what it's supposed to do.
All our FirstNet/AT&T sites are using the same backhaul to the MTSO. It's a single fiber pair with no back up. When we have our big earthquake and the streets buckle, that glass will be trashed. Nothing like good ole 2 way radio
I'm a convert to FirstNet from AT&T and it's the same old bag. The pricing plans and real unlimited data with no throttling are nice. At the end of the day my P25 system will still do what it's supposed to do.
All our FirstNet/AT&T sites are using the same backhaul to the MTSO. It's a single fiber pair with no back up. When we have our big earthquake and the streets buckle, that glass will be trashed. Nothing like good ole 2 way radio
mmckenna
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Yeah, that impacted us heavily. We lost all internet, phone and cellular service in/out of the immediate area. I could call within our local CO, but that was it. Cellular was useless since all the links to the MTSO's went with it. Confused the hell out of people because they still had "bars", but couldn't get calls in or out. I had to run to the fire station and use their satellite phone to get to AT&T to find out what was going on.
We had several meetings after that with AT&T and others. They admitted that there was zero redundancy in the local network. All the CO's were connected in a line, one to the other up into Boulder Creek, and nothing beyond that. At one point they had a microwave path closing the loop over into San Jose, but that had been damaged in the '89 earthquake and they never replaced it.
Within one year they had alternate paths and we haven't had an issue since. We ran our own fiber into Sunnyvale and down to Soledad for tie into the internets. Many others jumped on those links as an alternate to AT&T.
That was actually a really good thing to happen. It exposed a lot of weaknesses in the system. I scored a satellite phone out of the deal.
Our PSAP and all the others in the area were able to get 911 calls. However, CLEMARS was hot and heavy with traffic. I sat in our dispatch center and listened to it, we were hearing PSAPS from all over the area on it.
The hospitals switched over to the HEARS system and did just fine, although a couple of hams did set up at one of the local hospitals. From debriefs, apparently all they handled was routine traffic about supply levels and available beds. Not an issue since nothing really impacted people's health. Just a good exercise for them.
I'm in the process of migrating some of our stuff over. Somehow I ended up as the primary for our agency, and I need to offload that onto someone else. FirstNet is putting a lot of non-public safety users on their system. They qualify as support, and they get lower priority, so its all good, but they are pushing hard.
I'll probably convert my AT&T cell phone over, the plans are better and unlimited internets is pretty nice.
All our FirstNet/AT&T sites are using the same backhaul to the MTSO. It's a single fiber pair with no back up. When we have our big earthquake and the streets buckle, that glass will be trashed. Nothing like good ole 2 way radio
Yeah, and it's a long way to the MTSO. We don't rely on cellular for much, but even when it does go down, we get a lot of complaints, like I'm supposed to do something about it. We keep drilling it into peoples heads that cellular is not reliable for emergency use. But the sales guys usually win that argument….
We're investing in new radio infrastructure. The 2008 issue is still fresh enough in people's minds, thankfully.
12dbsinad
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The problem is the damn FirstNet salesman. Have you ever sat in on a meeting with the decision makers of a agency? You'll find them (FirstNet) promising the world. Some of these agencies eat it all up. To them, it's a one size fits all solution and it all sounds perfect.
Well you know anyways, I certainly don't have to explain it to you.
mmckenna
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Yeah, just like Motorola sales people. In fact, it's like Motorola trained them...
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