Trai's long tryst with emergency calls still remains a work in progress

At least 15 years before last week’s trial disaster management siren was unleashed on millions of mobile phones, formal consultation of stakeholders had already taken off on emergency communication services in the country. It was in November 2011 that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) came out with a pre-consultation paper on “priority call routing in mobile networks during emergencies”. The trigger was the Mumbai bomb blasts of July 13, 2011, which shook India’s financial capital. The crisis led to severe congestion in the city’s cellular networks, prompting Trai to initiate its consultation process on the subject.

 

The idea was to ease mobile network congestion for personnel engaged in response and recovery during emergencies, while highlighting the importance of modern telecom infrastructure. The paper referred to the July 2006 Mumbai suburban train bombings as well as international disasters, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the Thailand tsunami in 2004, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994, to bring out the need for robust communication systems during periods of network congestion.  

 

‘’Historically, major disasters are the most intense generators of telecommunications traffic, and the resulting surge of demand can clog even the well-managed networks,’’ the regulator noted back in 2011.

 

This historical context is worth recalling amid the overwhelming response to the government’s latest mobile siren experiment as a disaster management measure. Using cell broadcast technology, the mobile-based disaster warning system has been developed by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) along with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).         

 

Since the start of its journey on emergency  communication more than 15 years ago in 2011, Trai brought out several consultation papers related to disaster management, the last one being in 2017.

 

The 2017 consultation paper of Trai revolved around the logic that rescue operations cannot be stopped or delayed even if the responding agencies are unable to communicate with one another. Citing the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, the regulator said that while seismic monitoring stations throughout the world detected the massive sub-sea earthquake that triggered the tsunami, a lack of procedures for communicating these early warnings to governments and inadequate infrastructure in the regions at risk delayed the transmission of these messages. “Therefore, it is clear that better communications can save several lives.’’

 

Explaining that many times the communication networks of certain public safety agencies are not interoperable or compatible with the networks of other agencies, Trai cited the example of the United States (US) nine years ago in its consultation paper. Public safety agencies have joined together to design, develop and deploy information and communications technologies to support policing, criminal justice, public safety and homeland security in the US, resulting in the creation of the Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) communication network for rapid action in times of disasters.

 

Based on the PPDR model of the US, the regulator posed many questions for stakeholder consultation, including those on the deficiencies of a fragmented PPDR system in India at that point, frequency bands that could be identified exclusively for public protection and disaster relief, and the quantum of spectrum needed for this.

 

Flowing from the consultation paper of 2017, the telecom regulator issued recommendations a year later. The PPDR network was the foundation of that recommendation. Trai pointed to a core weakness in its paper, that Indian PPDR agencies — including the police, fire departments, emergency medical professionals, paramilitary forces and many others — rely on narrow-band or old analogue systems meant for voice communication.

 

To put things in perspective, PPDR communication networks are run by independent state agencies and are issued licence by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under the Captive Mobile Radio Trunking Service category. Spectrum for this category is allocated by the Wireless Planning & Coordination Wing of DoT in a few select bands. Trai argued that this framework resulted in fragmented spectrum allocation and inefficient use of prime sub-GHz frequencies. PPDR agencies working in silos was another red flag raised by the regulator. After meetings with stakeholders, mainly the Ministry of Home Affairs and the NDMA — major users of PPDR communication — Trai finalised its recommendations.

 

The top recommendations included setting up an integrated broadband PPDR communication network, the formation of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the Ministry of Home Affairs to steer network operations, a timeline for DoT to phase out the existing analogue networks, and pan-India pilots through state-owned telcos BSNL and MTNL before executing the service.

 

On spectrum, which would ensure the seamless functioning of a nationwide broadband PPDR network, the regulator recommended dedicated bands across several frequencies, including 20 MHz of spectrum in the 440-470 MHz frequency range (preferably 450-470 MHz) for the future evolution of broadband PPDR.

 

Eight years later, much of it still remains a work in progress, even as millions of Indians got a glimpse of the country’s disaster management strategy last Saturday. Even as the telecom regulator has been formally engaged with the subject of disaster management for 15 years, the cell broadcast system developed by C-DoT in collaboration with the NDMA did not find any mention in the Trai papers.