The Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) is a

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

-directed emergency telephone service provided by a division of the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

. GETS uses enhancements based on existing commercial technology

Purpose

GETS supports federal, state, local, and tribal government, industry, and

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

personnel during crisis or emergencies by providing emergency access and priority processing for local and long-distance telephone calls on the

public switched telephone network The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides Communications infrastructure, infrastructure and services for public Telecommunications, telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that ...

. GETS is intended to be used in an emergency or crisis situation when the

is congested and the probability of completing a call over normal or other alternate telecommunication means is reduced. GETS is necessary because reliance on

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

has been accompanied by an increased vulnerability to

network congestion Network congestion in data networking and queueing theory is the reduced quality of service that occurs when a network node or link is carrying more data than it can handle. Typical effects include queueing delay, packet loss or the blocking of ...

and system failures. Although backup systems are in place, disruptions in service can still occur.

Natural disaster A natural disaster is "the negative impact following an actual occurrence of natural hazard in the event that it significantly harms a community". A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some econ ...

s, power outages, fiber cable cuts, and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

problems can cripple the telephone services of entire regions. Additionally, congestion in the

, such as the well-documented "

Mother's Day Mother's Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family or individual, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on different days in many parts of the world, most commonly in the ...

phenomenon", in which Mother's Day generally has the highest blocking of long-distance telephone calls of any single day of the year, can prevent access to circuits. However, during times of emergency, crisis, or war, government personnel and emergency workers need to know that their calls will go through. For cellular telephone users, a related capability is offered by the

Nationwide Wireless Priority Service The Nationwide Wireless Priority Service (WPS) is a system in the United States that allows high-priority emergency telephone calls to avoid congestion on wireless telephone networks. This complements the Government Emergency Telecommunications ...

(WPS). WPS users have the ability to queue at the top for the next available communications channel to their registered base station in order to place their call by dialing , greatly enhancing their ability to complete wireless calls during times of congestion. WPS is available only to designated leadership at all government levels, national security, emergency responders, and private sector critical infrastructure personnel, as approved by the NCS and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Rules and Requirements. GETS uses these major types of networks: * The local networks provided by local exchange carriers and

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

providers, such as

cellular Cellular may refer to: *Cellular automaton, a model in discrete mathematics * Cell biology, the evaluation of cells work and more * ''Cellular'' (film), a 2004 movie *Cellular frequencies, assigned to networks operating in cellular RF bands *Cell ...

carriers and

personal communications service A personal communications service (PCS) is set of communications capabilities that provide a combination of terminal mobility, personal mobility, and service profile management. This class of services comprises several types of wireless voice o ...

s (PCS) * The major long-distance networks provided by

interexchange carrier An interexchange carrier (IXC), in U.S. legal and regulatory terminology, is a type of telecommunication company, commonly called a long-distance telephone company. It is defined as any carrier that provides services across multiple local access ...

s such as

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

, and

Sprint Sprint may refer to: Aerospace *Spring WS202 Sprint, a Canadian aircraft design *Sprint (missile), an anti-ballistic missile Automotive and motorcycle *Alfa Romeo Sprint, automobile produced by Alfa Romeo between 1976 and 1989 *Chevrolet Sprint, ...

, including their international services * Government-leased networks, including the Federal Technology Service and the

Defense Switched Network The Defense Switched Network (DSN) is a primary information transfer network for the Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) of the United States Department of Defense. The DSN provides the worldwide non-secure voice, secure voice, data, facsim ...

In accordance with Section 1(g)5 of Executive Order 12472, the NCS also performs research and development to further enhance the GETS and WPS services through the use of new packet-based technologies (such as IP, or Internet Protocol). This work is done in the NCS' lab, formerly referred to as the eXperimental Testbed Environment. The multi-vendor lab is in the process of preparation for interoperability tests with other labs and research groups to validate these new approaches in today's Next Generation Networks (NGNs). Interoperability between NGNs and legacy telephone systems will continue to be an area of high interest and more elaborate studies for the NCS and their Committee of Principals throughout the transition from these legacy systems.

Accessibility

GETS is accessed through a dialing plan and

Personal Identification Number A personal identification number (PIN), or sometimes redundantly a PIN number or PIN code, is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system. The PIN has been the key to facilitat ...

(PIN) card verification system. Using common telephone equipment, the user dials the universal access number

710 __NOTOC__ Year 710 ( DCCX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 710 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar er ...

-627-4387 (710-NCS-GETS). A prompt directs the entry of the user's assigned twelve-digit PIN and the destination telephone number. Once the user is authenticated as valid, the call receives special treatment. When dealing with GETS User Assistance, users may need to provide a registered

password A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...

of 4 to 9 alphanumeric characters for those cards issued to an individual rather than through stockpile.

Effectiveness

GETS is designed to provide a 90% call completion rate when call volume is eight times normal capacity.

References

External links

GETS Web Site
{{USGovernment, url=http://gets.ncs.gov/ Disaster preparedness in the United States United States Department of Homeland Security

Purpose

Accessibility

Effectiveness

See also

References

External links