On the cutting edgeTeleContinuity offers survivable communication solution

The announcements by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service that the United States is facing a harsh hurricane season could not have come as good news to communication and IT managers. If the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi River floods, and a host of other disasters are any indication, then the communication systems in the hurricane-affected areas will likely be the first to fail, complicating efforts to respond to the disasters and mitigate their consequences, confounding search and rescue operations, and hampering recovery efforts. Similar anxiety must be shared by those in charge of communication networks in Asian and Latin American countries as they brace themselves for tropical storms, volcanic eruptions, and floods.

That communication systems collapse in disaster areas, making it difficult if not impossible for people in these areas to communicate with the outside world and among themselves, should not be surprising: What with the loss of power, the collapse of relay towers and dishes, the destruction of cables and switches, the flooding of tunnels — telephone services are discontinued, and those services which somehow manage to survive the disaster become so congested that it may not be possible to get through, certainly not in a timely fashion.

There is nothing new or startling about the description above, and yet, surprisingly, it appears that when it comes to addressing the problem of communication during disasters, most of the attention has focused on addressing the problem of communication interoperability among rescue and first response teams from different jurisdictions and agencies. Yes, interoperability is important, especially during disasters, but for communication systems to interoperate with each other they must first survive the disaster. In any event, for businesses in disaster areas the issue of survivable communication systems is more important than the problem of interagency communication interoperability.

The imbalance in addressing these two important communication issues — interoperability problems and survivability problems — is now being redressed. More companies and emergency services directors are thinking long and hard about how to provide for continuing communication before, during, and after a disaster hobbles business operations or wreaks havoc on a community.

Jim Kennedy, the business continuity services practice lead and a consulting member of the technical staff of Lucent Technologies, offers a good discussion which helps us understand what happens to communication networks during a disaster. Kennedy highlights the three links in the