Pandemic Planning

Pandemic Report

A pandemic planning report was completed in April 2006 which summarised the outcome of an assessment of the service supply capabilities of the telecommunications industry during a pandemic.

The assessment was based on data collected via a questionnaire developed by the MED working with members of the TCF.  The questionnaire was sent to telecommunications service providers and responses were received from the carriers, large ISPs and a very limited number of the small / niche ISPs.

Report Conclusions

Whilst it was very difficult to provide a detailed assessment of the precise impact of a pandemic the following high-level conclusions can be drawn from the data that has been provided by the carriers:

• All service providers rely on a small number of key people at their network management centres.  Operators will need to carefully manage these groups to ensure that a skeleton presence can be maintained.
• The fixed telephone network is robust and carriers have comprehensive traffic management tools and management experience. 
• The mobile telephone network may suffer significant congestion as users stay at home in the initial days of a pandemic, however the impact is likely to be minor to moderate after mitigation tools have been put in place.  Mobile carriers have limited options to minimise the impact of the traffic that has moved from business locations to residential locations but can use mitigation tools available in response.
• The impact on residential email and internet access services is hard to assess. However, service providers have few tools to manage either Internet or email traffic. These services are:-

             a) growing rapidly (service providers typically add capacity on a just in time basis);
             b) typically engineered on a best efforts basis; and
             c) vulnerable to spam and virus attacks.

• Service providers are likely to have difficulty responding to new service requests if a pandemic occurs.  Therefore businesses must install alternative call answering systems and remote working facilities now (both the business end and the residential end).
• Service provider help desks could be understaffed and they may not be able to support users who are unfamiliar with say remotely accessing their company’s email system.
• Most carriers rely on a wide range of contractors to provide essential services and they could be prevented from performing these services unless a generally recognised formal protocol is established to enable their staff to cross internal borders.
• Businesses should plan and install now:

            a) remote working facilities (both the business end and the residential end).  They should
                regularly train / test / exercise these plans as it will be too late when the pandemic arrives. In
                addition they should carefully consider the risks associated with a solution that relies entirely on
                Internet access; and
            b) alternative call answering facilities, such as call forwarding, which can be activated in the event of
                a pandemic.