National Security and Emergency Preparedness Telecommunications Programs

What Is It?

National Security Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) Telecommunications Programs are those services used to maintain a state of readiness or respond to and manage an event or crisis (local, national, or international) that:

• causes or could cause injury or harm to the population
• damages or results in loss of property
• degrades or threatens the NS/EP posture of the United States

What's It For?

The Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) Program is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) program used to identify and prioritize telecommunications services that support NS/EP missions. The TSP Program is the regulatory, administrative, and operational framework for priority restoration and provisioning of any qualified NS/EP telecommunications service. It is administered by the US Government Office of Priority Telecommunications (OPT), a branch of the National Communications System (NCS) within the Department of Defense (DoD).

How It Works

The TSP Program has two components: restoration and provisioning. A restoration priority is applied to new or existing telecommunication services to ensure their restoration before any non-TSP services. Priority restoration is necessary for a TSP service because interruptions may have a serious adverse effect on the supported NS/EP function. TSP restoration priorities must be requested and assigned before a service outage occurs.

Only services that support NS/EP missions are eligible for TSP assignments. Users must request a TSP assignment from the OPT. If approved, a TSP Authorization Code is assigned.

When TSP is assigned to identified NS/EP services, they will fall into two specific categories, Emergency and Essential, and are assigned priority levels. Users can then order TSP service from Verizon upon presentation of their TSP Authorization Code.

Verizon and other telecommunications service vendors are both authorized and required, when necessary, to provision and restore those telecommunications services with TSP assignments before services without such assignments. Verizon's crisis-management objective is to strive to manage and control all aspects of a disaster or crisis event as they relate to its network services by appropriately responding to the crisis and restoring the network, recovering any lost data, and mitigating the situation.

For information about pricing and ordering TSP when a request for service has been approved, contact your GSA or Verizon Account Manager. To gain additional information about TSP or request a TSP assignment, see www.dhs.gov/tsp.

Other National Communications System Programs

The National Communications System (NCS) is an interagency consortium of Federal departments and agencies that serves as the focal point for the industry/Government NS/EP telecommunications planning to support any crisis or disaster. Its mission is to "assist the President, the National Security Council, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Directory of the Office of Management and Budget in (1) the exercise of the telecommunications functions and responsibilities, and (2) the coordination of the planning for and provision of national security and emergency preparedness communications for the Federal government under all circumstances, including crisis of emergency, attack, recovery and reconstitution."

For additional information about the NCS, see www.dhs.gov/tsp.

Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) supports NS/EP requirements for the use of public, defense, or federal telephone networks by government departments, agencies, and other authorized users. GETS uses existing features and services of the public switched network (PSN) with selected NS/EP augmentations and enhancements. Developed in response to White House tasking, GETS provides authenticated access, enhanced routing, and priority treatment in local and long-distance telephone networks. GETS access is through a simple dialing plan and personal identification number (PIN).

For additional information about GETS, see www.dhs.gov/tsp.

Priority Access Service (PAS) provides a means for NS/EP telecommunications users to obtain priority access to available wireless radio channels when necessary to initiate emergency calls.

For additional information about PAS, see www.dhs.gov/tsp.

GETS and PAS are not part of the WITS2001 Contract, however information about these services is provided in response to customer inquiries and interest in NS/EP programs.