In the midst of one of the stormiest winters in parts of the U.S. in decades, many municipalities and utility companies are wondering: during intense, stormy weather, what are the best steps that can be taken to ensure that life-saving emergency services remain up and running during blizzards, high winds and ice storms?
One company, DPS Telecom, intends to find out. The Fresno, Calif.-based network monitoring solutions provider today announced a global campaign to help protect vulnerable telecommunications networks from extreme weather, and the company is looking for public input to that end. By collecting and publishing industry knowledge from around the world, the campaign aims to minimize deadly interruptions in commercial power, transit, telecommunications, and emergency services like 911.
“This massive winter storm has caused serious problems in several key industries,” said Eric Storm (News - Alert), president of DPS Telecom. “Wired and wireless phone networks are being inundated with calls, and many portions of those phone networks have lost commercial electricity. Hundreds of thousands of people are without power. Outages and failures like this are inevitable if the companies managing our infrastructure don't have good visibility of their own networks.”
In particular during times of large storms or other natural disasters, 911 services must be available, commercial power must stay online, and all types of transit need to keep moving. To accomplish this, the nation's telecom infrastructure must be resilient, and this can be accomplished via robust remote network monitoring and control of telecom networks, which can literally save lives. Since DPS Telecom (News - Alert) manufactures remote monitoring equipment for telecom networks, Storm understands the important role that remote monitoring can play in protecting our modern communications infrastructure. That knowledge inspired the campaign announced today.
“Watching this storm unfold has reminded me of the precautions many telecom, utility, and transit companies have taken by deploying monitoring tools,” said Storm. “Still, I know that many other well intentioned companies are using outdated network monitoring techniques – or none at all. This can literally endanger lives by causing electricity, 911, and public safety communications to fail when we need them most. Imagine being cut off from your local 911 dispatch center or without electricity during a major storm.”
According to Storm, poor disaster preparedness at some companies is mostly due to unequal knowledge among telecom professionals.
“Just about everyone in the industries we serve wants to do a great job. If they fully understand how to monitor their network properly to enhance public safety, they'll do it every time,” Storm said. “To that end, we've published hundreds of free articles on http://www.dpstele.com as a resource for the industry. But in response to the massive storm we're experiencing in the U.S., we're now actively seeking new best practices from key industry players.”
In an effort to close this knowledge gap, DPS Telecom has opened a call for e-mail submissions from telecom professionals anywhere in the world. The information received will be collected, organized and ultimately published for free on http://www.dpstele.com.
Those interested in submitting network monitoring tips and advice (or those who wish to request a free copy of the compiled report when it becomes available) can visit http://www.dpstele.com/storm2011 or send e-mail directly to [email protected] .
Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Tammy Wolf