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Resilient Telecommunications

Good communications are at the heart of an effective response to and recovery from an emergency.

Resilient communications are able to absorb or mitigate the effects of disruptions to normal life. Circumstances or events that disrupt normal life include natural events such as flooding, or circumstances that have occurred through human intervention such as an electrical power failure or a terrorist incident.

There is no one simple solution to enhancing the resilience of communications. However, there are five guiding principles that, when appropriately applied, lead to enhanced resilience. These are:

• identify and prioritise communication activities;
• look beyond the technical solutions;
• ensure diversity of your technical solutions;
• adopt layered fall-back arrangements; and
• plan to share and exchange information.

Telecommunications Sub-Groups (TSGs) have been formed to act as a local focus for enhancing the resilience of responders’ telecommunications arrangements. TSGs have been established in each Local Resilience Forum (LRF) area as an integral part of the Government’s Resilient Telecommunications strategy.

The overall resilience of communications arrangements can be considerably enhanced through the use of schemes that are only available within the responder community. A summary of a selection of technical solutions are provided in this chapter. This covers:

• public fixed telecommunications;
• public mobile telecommunications;
• satellight communications;
• airwave;
• the National Resilience Extranet (NRE);
• High Integrity Telecommunications System (HITS).

• Emergency Response and Recovery: Emergency Response and Recovery: Chapter 6 - Resilient Telecommunications [PDF]

Further information can be found here: Resilience Telecommunications