Cabinet Office UK Resilience

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Resilient Telecommunications

Enhancing the resilience of communications

Privileged access to fixed telecommunications networks

The Government Telephone Preference Scheme (GTPS) was established in the late 1950s when there was a threat of nuclear war destroying significant parts of the national infrastructure. GTPS was designed to conserved power and provide assured access to telephony for essential users in an emergency, when there may be a heavy load placed on the public telephone network, or the network itself may have been damaged.

GTPS is provided and managed on a national basis by both BT plc and Cable and Wireless plc and in the Hull area, by Kingston Communications. The Scheme is only available to two categories of registered users: those vital to the prosecution of war and national survival, and those necessary to maintain the life of the community during a civil emergency (which includes public access lines such as payphones connected directly to the provider’s network).

Although the three providers have implemented the Scheme in slightly different ways, when activated the majority of unregistered customers will loose access to the ‘dial tone’ preventing them from making out-going calls (including 999 / 112) however all customers can still receive calls. Only registered users will be able to make out-going calls from the telephone connected to a registered line.

The core telecommunications networks in the UK are being overhauled and existing services converged using the technology that underpins the Internet. These networks are referred to as 'next generation networks' or NGNs. Further details of BT’s NGN programme [External website] can be found on their site. The new networks provide functionality that can support an enhanced preference scheme. We envisage that the new scheme will be called the Fixed Telecommunications Privileged Access Scheme, or FTPAS.

Largely as a result of the draconian implications of activating the GTPS, that at least 90% of lines connected to an exchange cannot make calls even to the Emergency Services, the current scheme has been used very rarely. As a consequence, it would appear unwise for responders to rely on GTPS as a cornerstone for providing resilient telecommunications. Elsewhere on this site we provide Five Guiding Principles that can be used as a focus for measures to enhance the resilience of telecommunications arrangements. In view of the gradual removal of the old networks, over which the existing scheme works, we are not encouraging further take-up of the current scheme.