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Resilient Telecommunications

The Government's Strategy for enhancing the resilience of telecommunications

Strand 1. Enhancing the resilience of everyday telecommunications

An important step in enhancing resilience is to help ensure that responders avail themselves of the best possible value from commercial telecommunication services. Steps have already been taken to raise awareness through newsletters, workshops and interim guidance. One of the messages to come back from our engagement with stakeholders was that there is a need for clear and concise advice to assist particularly smaller organisations appreciate the range of technologies available, their strengths and weaknesses, and the steps that might be taken locally (often at little cost) to enhance resilience - see " Enhancing the resilience of communications".

The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) [External website] has produced guidance on enhancing the resilience of telecommunications networks and services [External PDF].

Relevant courses at the Emergency Planning College [External website] have been reviewed and extensively revised to support Telecommunications Sub-Groups that have been established to take forward the agenda of enhancing the resilience of telecommunications in each Local Resilience Forum (LRF) area.

The Electronic Communications Resilience and Response Group (EC-RRG, previously TI-EPF), is established to ensure the availability of Electronic Communications infrastructure for the UK and provide an industry emergency response capability through the ownership and maintenance of the National Emergency Plan for Telecommunications. Further details of the Group can be found in its Terms of Reference. The Group has an arrangement in place, referred to as NEAT (the National Emergency Alert for Telecommunications), which supports co-operation across the industry in response to emergencies affecting telecommunications in the UK. Membership of the Group embraces Category 2 Telecommunications Responders (as defined by the Civil Contingencies Act (2004)).

In view of the importance of communications in responding to emergencies Telecommunications Sub-Groups are to be established, as appropriate, within the existing resilience infrastructures. Each sub-group will be responsible for considering all aspects of communications, including the technical means, and how resilience might be enhanced within their area.