Enhan Cing Telecomm Unications Resilience

1 Delivering resilient wireless

communications under potentially challenging conditions

During the floods in 2007, Gloucestershire County Council’s Emergency Management Service worked with RAYNET to use their wireless communications to enhance their response

Resilience issues ... Wireless telecommunications provide important tactical communications. However, services delivered over public 2G and 3G cellular mobile networks are not resilient - public networks can readily become congested and a power failure of grid distributed electricity renders local communications inoperable within an hour. Private mobile radio systems, and in particular those that use licensed RAYNET was formed in 1953 spectrum, can offer highly resilient point-to following the east coast floods when radio -point and point-to-multipoint amateurs provided emergency communications. This is largely as a communications. RAYNET has provided consequence of a high degree of control additional communications capabilities at that users can exert over resilience- major incidents involving aircraft, trains, enhancing features. flooding, evacuations, telephone exchange failures and chemical spills. They also provide safety communications for large- Existing telecommunications scale community events such as the arrangements can be augmented by the use London Marathon, charity cycle rides and of amateur radio equipment provided by long-distance walks and orienteering. members of RAYNET – the Radio Amateurs’ Emergency Network. Members use predominantly VHF and RAYNET’s services can complement UHF radios to provide local and wide area existing arrangements during major civil coverage from handheld and vehicle emergencies or related exercises and local mounted equipment. Depending upon the community events. Members are licensed situation they may rely solely on handheld radio amateurs who use their own equipment. However, since the range equipment to provide additional support. tends to be relatively confined they can

Resilient telecommunications are able absorb or mitigate the effects of an event or circumstances that disrupts normal life. Disruptions can be natural events such as flooding, or circumstance that may have occurred through human intervention such as an electrical

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2 Guard against your business being

isolated by re-directing in-coming calls at the exchange

Kings’ College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has used a number of measures to enhance the resilience of their telecommunications including using GemaTech equipment to redirect incoming calls to alternate numbers

Resilience issues ... wires can be brought down by trees in high winds; kerb-side ‘boxes’ - that are Core telecommunications infrastructures increasingly containing equipment that are designed in a way so that they are was once located in an exchange building inherently resilient and individual - are vulnerable to vehicle impacts and exchanges have a very high level of joints below ground in foot-way boxes can availability – they rarely fail. suffer corrosion from water ingress - However, the local access network - which can be exacerbated during flooding. sometimes referred to as the ‘local loop’ or Recent high copper prices have exposed a ‘last mile’ - that connects your premises to further vulnerability to your connection to the local exchange is much more likely to core networks - that of cabling theft. suffer problems. If this occurs your organisation can become isolated and you These problems can be circumvented will have no way of receiving incoming by installing equipment in your calls. telecommunication provider’s exchange Equipment is available that can re-direct that can be instructed to reroute incoming incoming calls to your premises. Installing calls to other phones in other locations. such equipment remotely from your premises, in your telecommunications ‘Dial plans’ that describe how supplier’s facilities, can prevent your incoming calls are rerouted can be pre- business from being isolated in the event programmed into the equipment for that your connection to the exchange is anticipated circumstances, such as staff lost. being unable to gain access to your premises, for example as a consequence of flooding or transport difficulties. Re- The ‘last mile’ connection from your routing could be to an individual’s cellular telecommunication provider’s exchange to mobile or to a call centre. Alternatively, your premises is inherently less resilient calls can be re-routed ‘on the fly’ to because it has to be more accessible. respond to changing circumstances. Re- Accessibility increases likely means of routing can be activated by the equipment failure or service degradation: overhead detecting a fault or by direct intervention.

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3 Keep in touch with your people as they

move location through a single contact number

The MOD use BT’s smartnumbers service to deliver a flexible and resilient business-as-usual solution to ensure staff always remain contactable

Resilience issues ... severely degraded is extremely low, however a failure, such as that of the Directly reaching a particular telephone Paddington North exchange in London in number can often be a vital link in a March 2010 can have wide reaching ‘resilience chain’. For example, a particular consequences. The Paddington exchange number may have been widely publicised suffered a catastrophic power failure for a specific service or the number is resulting in all local connections being lost associated with a particular functional as well as circuits that passed through the response or even key individual. For a exchange for onward routing. The effects number of reasons it might not be possible of the failure were felt locally by around to establish contact. These might include: 160,000 customers and more widely a failure of a particular telecommunications field in Surrey and Berkshire. This rare circuit to your premises or even an entire telephone exchange, or, staff being occurrence of an exchange failure would prevented from gaining access to a also have resulted in failure of call particular premises possibly as a redirection equipment located in the consequence of flooding or a police exchange (see Case Study 2) because cordon. equipment that re-routs the calls is powered from the exchange. Case study 2 looked at how equipment installed in your telecommunications An alternative approach to installing supplier’s exchange can help circumvent rerouting equipment is to use a ‘virtual such problems arising to business number’ service. There are a number of continuity. This case study looks at the providers of these simple call-forwarding ‘softer’ staffing issues associated with services. However, their resilience needs supporting flexible working practices and to be carefully scrutinised as many have focuses on a solution that is systemic in a an obvious single point of failure. supplier’s telecommunications system Resilience can be greatly enhanced by thereby guarding against exchange failure. using a solution that is ‘systemic’ in your telecommunications supplier’s Experience indicates that the likelihood infrastructure. of an exchange failing or services becoming

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4 Connect together 2-way radios and

computers to provide economical wide- area communications

Ribble Valley Borough Council worked with ARL Communications Ltd to enable responder's existing 2-way radio networks to be connected together using the Internet providing interoperable communications

Resilience issues ... Two-way radios can be used to provide resilient telecommunications for responders on the move, but geographical coverage can be a severe limitation even with higher powered vehicle mounted equipment. Range can be considerably extended using a repeater station located at a high vantage point, such as a hill. Coverage can be extended further by linking repeater sites together. Conventionally this is achieved using UHF and UHF radio networks by providing a radio links or expensive land lines. flexible, resilient and interoperable platform for responder organisations Linking repeaters together using the without the requirement to change-out Internet opens up a whole range of existing equipment or build new networks. possibilities: repeater sites need no longer be within line-of-sight and sites beyond the The solution called EARL – reach of a single radio link can be Emergency Area Radio Link - uses VoIP connected together. Using the Internet to (Voice over Internet Protocol) applications provide connectivity enables computers to to connect existing two-way radio be connected to the voice network this communications to other radio networks provides additional functionality such as and computers. This enables computers enabling connected parties to be visible to running a VoIP application to join the one another thereby providing the opportunity for greater interoperability. communications network anywhere where an Internet connection is available.

ARL Communications Ltd worked with Remote radio networks are securely Ribble Valley Borough Council to deliver a connected together using encrypted links system that connects existing radio over the Internet or corporate intranet. infrastructures extending coverage of VHF EARL includes a server co-located with

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5 Enhancing the likelihood of staying in

touch by mobile phone in remote areas

The Manx Telecom Strongest Signal Mobile service provides a UK national roaming capability without the hassle of a country code prefix

Resilience issues ... Mobile operators all claim about 98%-99% demographic coverage. This is very different to geographical coverage which can be very patchy, especially in rural areas. Taking a service from an overseas operator that has national roaming agreements with UK networks enables a mobile to ‘roam’ across those networks and overcomes the coverage issues that may exist on any one network. communications tool, although for those Generally, a major drawback of this who require 24 x 7 comms there are approach is that inbound calls to the drawbacks that require consideration. handset must be prefixed with the country access code for the service provider. This Mobile radios connected to the 2G and can result in confusion, since normally the 3G cellular wireless networks are not country code is totally transparent. The resilient against failure of grid distributed Manx Telecom service however does not electricity since the batteries in the base require a country code to prefix numbers – stations will become depleted within an it is already set to +44 to work in the UK. In hour of power loss. In addition, in the addition, since Manx Telecom have locality of a major incident, networks can roaming agreements with all UK service become so heavily congested that they are providers all networks are accessible and rendered useless for voice communication the handset roams to the network with the and SMS messages can take several hours strongest signal. to be delivered.

The Manx Telecom Strongest Signal The wide-scale adoption of cellular SIM through its national roaming mobile telephony by society and business capability and as a provider of MTPAS has resulted in it becoming a compelling enabled SIMs can help to overcome some

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