FCC updates Katrina recovery but excludes VoIP community

The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that much more work remains to be done to restore telephone and other communications services to the area affected by Hurricane Katrina, and proposed using $211 million from the Universal Service Fund to help in the restoration effort.

The agency also was criticized, however, for not including the Voice over IP community among its witnesses at Thursday’s open meeting, which was moved to BellSouth Emergency Call Center in Atlanta to allow many of the companies involved in the restoration effort to participate.

Analyst and VoIP pioneer Jeffrey Pulver of Pulver.com chastised the FCC for failing to include the VoIP community at Thursday’s meeting, especially considering the role the technology has played in providing communications for relief and emergency workers while the traditional telephone network has been out of service.

“I had hoped that one insight government might have gained from Hurricane Katrina is the value of promoting alternate modes of communications via IP and the Internet, and not compel all communications services to look alike and abide by identical standards to promote such social goods as emergency response,” said Pulver in a statement, issued on the eve of the VON trade show which his company sponsors.

VoIP has provided some critical links in the weeks following Katrina, particularly over wireless networks. Wireless Internet Service Providers, including companies such as Vanguard Technologies and Maximum Access, have used unlicensed wireless spectrum to provide data links to shelters and delivered VoIP over those links. In addition, equipment providers including Cisco Systems, Intel, Trango and Alvarion and service providers including Vonage, have donated equipment and service to the area.

"Maximum Access is running point to point Ethernet 10 Mb bridges to link bandwidth from a network operations center to a remote tower location," said Shayne Rose, manager of ISP business sales for Trango. "From that tower lodation using Tango 900 Mhz point to multipoint deployments, they can reach these shelters that are helping families – more than 20 being fed with our product. They are unning VoIP phone services so the shelters can have communications with families who are not together and have contact with emergency relief agencies. A lot of them do not have any other form of communication other than this Etherent deployment that Trango is involved in."

Ironically, in light of Pulver’s criticism of the FCC, it was the federal agency the initially spawned the wireless and VoIP community effort through a teleconference the Friday after Katrina hit.

“It wasn't just the VoIP service that helped bridge the communications divide during Hurricane Katrina,” Pulver said. “Frankly, text messaging, email, Web-obtained information, video blogs and other streaming media, and other IP-based applications were instrumental in keeping people connected and informed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. These applications only hint at what is possible through more ubiquitous, robust usage of the Internet. All these applications have been slighted today by the FCC's focus on carriers and traditional modes of communication.”

For example, he added, the mayor of New Orleans was able to receive a call from President Bush because a city employee was able to use his Vonage service while his laptop was connected to an available Internet connection.

Yankee Group analyst Lindsay Schroth said Thursday that wireless systems “are incredibly important in a situation like this, as they were after 9/11” but with the addition of VoIP service over wireless data links, have become even more critical. “I think this proves the importance of having spectrum available for these services,” she commented.

The FCC had opened up some additional spectrum, normally used for educational purposes, to be used commercially in the area affected by Katrina. One of the issues raised at Thursday’s open meeting was the need for Congress to allocate additional spectrum to be used in emergencies when other communications systems fail.

At that open meeting, the federal agency said about 350,000 people remain without phone service. Rod Odom, president of BellSouth Network Services, said at that meeting that it will take months to restore all service.

Bill Smith, CTO of BellSouth, said in a telephone interview this week that the company is receiving assistance from others within the industry in terms of work crews. SBC Communications said earlier that it is providing assistance and Verizon announced Thursday that the first 100 of its employees have been dispatched to help relief efforts.