Prosimos

Prosimos (Priority Communications for Critical Situations on Mobile Networks) is a collaborative project originally funded by the Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security, in the context of the programme Prevention, Preparedness and Consequence Management of Terrorism and other Security-Related Risks. It has been now assigned to the Directorate-General Home Affairs, which was formed 1 July 2010 when the Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security was divided into the Directorate-General Home Affairs and the Directorate-General Justice.
Overview
The aim of the PROSIMOS project is to enable critical users, such as emergency services, to communicate during emergency situations, at a time when Public Mobile Networks (PMN) services may be restricted due to damage, congestion or faults. The project was also tasked with researching business cases for the implementation of priority communications system on PMN.
The project is being carried out at Spanish level with the objective of extending the obtained results through Europe.
This type of service has been developed in some Countries worldwide such as USA and UK: the study of these systems is needed in order to analyze the differences and identify the most suitable service to be applied at European level.
Wireless Communications for Emergency Agencies Worldwide
Wireless Priority Service is a priority calling capability developed by the National Communications System (NCS) of USA in order to improve the connection capabilities for a limited number of authorized national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) cell phone users. WPS is an easy-to-use, add-on feature subscribed on a per-cell phone basis not requiring special phones.
WPS does not pre-empt calls in progress and is intended for use in emergency situations where network congestion is blocking call attempts. Also, channels are not held in reserve in anticipation of a NS/EP event requiring priority access service.
The key NS/EP personnel that can access this system are those with leadership responsibilities at the Federal, State, local, and tribal levels of government, and in critical private industries (e.g., finance, telecommunications, energy, transportation, etc.).
These users can range from senior members of the Presidential administration, to emergency managers and fire and police chiefs at the local level, to critical technicians in wireline and wireless carriers, banking, nuclear facilities, and other vital national infrastructures.
WPS is currently being provided on GSM(Global System for Mobile Communications) and iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) by [http://en. .org/wiki/AT%26T AT&T], Edge Wireless, SouthernLINC, Sprint/Nextel (iDEN) and T-Mobile. WPS is also being provided on CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) by Alltel, Cellular South, Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless.
Whether transferring an existing number or obtaining a new number, the organizational WPS POC has to submit this change request online. The new carrier cannot accept a request from the user directly to add WPS to the user’s new account.
Once approved for WPS, organization POCs will procure equipment and establish basic service, if they have not already done so. If not previously provided, agency POCs will send the NCS the account and phone number information. The NCS will then issue an order to the carrier to add the WPS feature to the phone. It has to be noted that, for WPS, the United States pays for the infrastructures and enhancements (estimated to be $200 million over 5 years) and user agencies pay for commercial wireless subscription costs, equipment costs (e.g. handsets, charger units, etc.), one time WPS activation cost, monthly WPS service feature cost, a per minute usage fee and repair/maintenance/replacement costs of existing NCS-furnished handsets (if applicable). WPS charges are in addition to commercial plans and other features, toll and special service charges.
British government developed the ACCOLC (Access Overload Control) to tackle the problems encountered when in a crisis situation the public cellular mobile telephony network became overwhelmed by a high concentration of calls. This procedure restricted mobile phone usage in the event of a major incident during the response to emergencies.
ACCOLC was usually invoked by the Police Incident Commander but it also could have been invoked by the Cabinet Office. This scheme allowed the mobile phone networks to restrict access in a specific area to registered numbers only.
The system was designed to restrict civilian access to the mobile network during an emergency when it is important that lines are kept free for priority emergency service personnel. When the ACCOLC had been requested, the network identified the cells adjacent to the incident and began to run the system on those cells alone.
Only the phones that had been enabled were allowed access to the network and all other users received a fast beep (called a Fast Busy Signal) or not available tones. If the user received a recorded message saying lines are busy or a normal engaged tone then this would indicate that ACCOLC was not being used.
If public mobile phone networks are overwhelmed following an incident, the Police Gold Commander will advise all mobile network providers that a major incident has occurred and that a multi-agency coordination centre is being established. In response, network operators will continue to manage their networks to ensure that services are available to the widest number of users.
Should networks become congested, network managers will enable handsets fitted with special SIM cards so they stand a higher chance of being able to make a call.
The Mobile Telecoms Privileged Access Scheme (MTPAS) was launched on the 1st September 2009 as a partnership between the Cabinet Office, Regional Government Offices, Local Resilience Forums’ Telecommunications Sub Groups (TSG’s) and the responder community. MTPAS has superseded ACCOLC (Access Over Load Control), the old Scheme for managing mobile privileged access.
MTPAS is only available to Category 1 and 2 Responders (as defined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and partner organizations which directly support them at the scene of an emergency incident. Category 1 Responders are those organizations at the core of the response to most emergencies and that are subject to the full set of civil protection duties: they are local authorities such as a county or district council, emergency services such as fire and rescue authorities, police and transport police, ambulance services and environmental protection agencies . Category 2 organizations are health and safety executive, transport and utility companies: these "co-operating bodies" are less likely to be involved in the heart of planning work but will be heavily involved in incidents that affect their sector.
Other examples of priority telecommunications services for emergency agencies are the following:
*Emergency Communication Systems in Peru
*Wireless Priority Sefvice System in Australia
*Wireless Priority Service in Canada
*In Sweden, the efforts at the moment are focus on developing the standards and application guides needed for the implementation of priority services between operators and service providers of public communications networks for both fixed and mobile networks.
Technical reports regarding Priority Communication System in Sweden are. The reports aim at providing an application guide covering interworking aspects for priority
services between operators and service providers of public communication networks in Sweden
State of the art of Wireless Communications in emergency situations at national level in Spain
In Spain there is a generalized local and regional scope for priority communication networks deployment and use,
and the absence of cooperation and coordination between local, regional and national entities.
There is a great fragmentation in the use of networks and technologies, managed by local and regional governments,
which results in a lack of interoperability between agencies and big economic costs of service maintenance for public entities.
The great majority of regions have chosen to deploy a region-wide TETRA network.
In two cases the election was to join a nationwide TETRAPOL network already deployed.
In any case, digital trunking radio systems are the election for the deployment of new systems.
At this moment, there are not government driven initiatives in Spain to promote emergency communication services
to be deployed over public mobile telephone or data networks.
User Requirements
An investigation on the modes of operation of potential end users of the PROSIMOS solution has been performed,
together with a definition of an appropriate concept of operations to support the investigation. A questionnaire for consultation to end users has been produced and interviews with end users to elicit user needs have been performed.
Then a mapping from user needs into user requirements has been done.
Two big outcomes of this activity may be highlighted: all potential end users have shown a great interest in the topic of the project and
have expressed their wish of having the opportunity to extend the use of technologies that enable modern applications such
as live video transfer, geo-positioning, dynamic calling group allocation, among others;
consultations undertaken have shown that prioritization mechanisms in public mobile networks
are necessary also in non critical situations, i.e. daily work also requires prioritization of communications
for a mobile communications system to be used in regular basis by the emergency bodies.
Technological Solution
HSDPA is the most suitable technology to implement PROSIMOS service.
In fact, the establishment time in HSDPA is lower than in GSM.
In order to allow that different kind of users choose the optimal technology (RAT,
Radio Access Technologies) at each moment, the proposed architecture should supports vertical Hand Over
between different RATs. Different interfaces, functions and Common Radio Resource Management (CRRM) have been individuated to achieve this functionality.
The support of PROSIMOS prioritization mechanism needs that public mobile network deploys concrete radio resources.
The whole set of radio resources for an operator is considered to be partitioned into radio resource pools.
These radio resource pools are controlled by two different types of functional entities: Radio Resource Management (RRM) entity, that is, a functional entity responsible for the management of one radio resource pool, i.e.
this characterises the radio resource pool; Common Radio Resource Management (CRRM) entity, that is, a
functional entity responsible for a common management, i.e. coordination of overlapping/neighbour radio resource pools controlled by different
RRM entities. This new CRRM entity is introduced to allow some kind of coordination among different radio resource
pools whose radio resources are linked to the same geographic area in the network.
Study of CAPEX and OPEX costs
The analysis of the CAPEX and OPEX costs
provides the investment derived from PROSIMOS project’s deployment including both capital and operational expenditures.
In this activity, the specific case of Spain has been analyzed, where there is a domain carrier
holding approximately 50% of the national mobile network and so carrying 50% of the PROSIMOS cost.
The major amount of the total cost belongs to the infrastructure updating due to the old-dated currently nodes existing
(OPEX cost approximately represents 10% from CAPEX costs).
But thanks to this renewal not only PROSIMOS will be available, but also other new services (not currently supported)
will be available to the carriers that will come to possible profitable services. Therefore, the costs obtained from
the CAPEX cost will be not only amortized along the hardware (nodes) life cycle,
but also through the multiple incomes obtained from these services.
Business Models for PCPMN
Several Business Models have been developed for the implementation of PROSIMOS service in
Public Mobile Networks. The general idea is that PROSIMOS is a service that
has to be paid by users; all Mobile Operators implement the same service and
the customer segments can select the operator on the basis of the service cost: no incompatibility issues arise;
Mobile Operators will profit from enabling the service. The proposed business models mainly differ from the way the CAPEX
and OPEX costs are divided among the three stakeholders:
Country Government, Customers (Emergency Units) and Service Providers (Mobile Operators).
In Model OnlyOp, all the Mobile Operators that own a private infrastructure will implement the service and will compete to gain market share;
Country Government pays all CAPEX costs; Mobile Operators share OPEX costs on the basis of their market share.
Also in Model 3Shared all the Mobile Operators that own a private infrastructure will implement the service and will compete to gain market share,
but CAPEX and OPEX costs are to be shared among Country Government, Customer Segments and Mobile Operators.
In Model Exc Country Government and Customer Segments publish a procurement contest to find the Mobile Operator to exclusively implement the service.
Regulatoty Framework and Legal issues
ISO, IEC and ITU are three worldwide standardization organisms that jointly work in order to define standard development for
the benefit of the global community (at European level, ETSI and CEPT play the same role). Nowadays there are only few countries where it has been
implemented a Wireless priority system, and no standard has been proposed to define
guidelines for the development of similar types of services for emergency agencies. This means
that, in case PROSIMOS would be implemented and if no standard for this type of service was
released, there would not be any particular standard specification to be followed.
In case a stakeholder or an industry sector considered the need of a PROSIMOS standard, it
could communicate this issue to previous bodies. Then, a consultation and a verification phase
would be launched among the technical committee members in order to lead to the definition of
the standard.
Moreover, the Directives of the European Commission affect PROSIMOS implementation since they are
laws that apply to all Telecommunication Services operation in the European Union (or at least
the basic pillar that national laws have to abide by).
The most impartant directive that has to be taken into account is DIRECTIVE 2009/136/EC. This directive is part of the new Telecom Reform package (“Citizens’ Rights” directive) and
amends Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic
communications networks and services, Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of
personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector and
Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 on cooperation between national authorities responsible for the
enforcement of consumer protection laws. As far as PROSIMOS implementation is concerned, the legal framework that will affect the
service is the one concerning users’ rights. This new framework integrates and amends the
Directive 2002/22/EC (the articles that are not corrected or replaced in the new directive are to
be considered unchanged from those present in the previous directives). Thus, the new directive establishes the following points:
*Article 13 on financing of universal service (unchanged from 2002/22/EC) obligations says
that the possibility of Government to partially fund the implementation of new
services for public utility is contemplated by the European Commission; moreover, it is possible
that these costs can be shared among different operators in a transparent way.
*Article 22 on Quality of service recalls the one of 2002/22EC says that Quality of service information have to be clearly available for end users; therefore, it is expected that information regarding QoS parameters in case of emergency as
deriving from the implementation of PROSIMOS service should be specified.
*Moreover, Article 23 on the integrity of the networks (unchanged from 2002/22/EC) says that in case of emergency the access of citizens to emergency service has to be guaranteed; for this reason, even if PROSIMOS is intended to discourage public users from
using mobile networks in emergency situations, it has to assure that calling to emergency numbers can still be performed. Moreover, it is highlighted that the possibility to limit end-users’ access to the network is a matter of Member
States’ regulations.
In general, as far as regulatory framework is concerned,the following considerations are envisaged:
Regarding the implementation of a prioritization service:
*No specific standards neither guidelines about prioritization in communications exist.
*Priority mechanisms allowed but limitations in users’ access mechanisms (included calls
refusal) are under the umbrella of national framework.
The main impact of PROSIMOS implementation is related to User’s rights and more
concretely this recommendation are done:
*Quality of Service should be clearly available and guarantees of minimum capabilities
(quality reduction instead of denial) should be provided. Then, some possible
modifications in the customers’ contracts and maybe in the regulations should be
performed allowing a reduction of this quality in case of emergency operations.
*Users have the right of reimbursements by service interruption: Some modifications are
needed in order to consider some exceptions to this right in emergency operations like
for example cases of force majeure
*Guarantee of access in case of emergency: Even in emergency situations, calls to
emergency numbers must be guaranteed
Consortium
Safety Related Entity: , Spain- Coordinator
Developer and Business Model Entity:, Spain- Technical Leader
State of the Art Research Entity:Robotiker, Spain
Technical Expert Entity:
Related Projects
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European Commission Notabilty Interest
Harmonization and interoperability of Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR)communications, a topic which directly addresses PROSIMOS, are of upmost importance for European Commission and several of its communications and policies are addressing this issue (see for example Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the first radio spectrum policy programme).
Also includes an open research topic for the use of Public Mobile networks for PPDR uses (topic SEC-2012.5.2-1 Preparation of the next generation of PPDR communication networks) which encourages research on the
use of commercial standards, use of services provided by commercial operators, security and privacy, interoperability within and between nations, and frequency allocation issues. The research should set out potential options, the economic implications and possible migration paths from the current and planned PPDR provision. Architectural solutions can range from complete replacement of PPDR systems, evolution of existing networks through upgrades, overlay of additional networks, for example based on GSM/LTE, partial or full use of commercial operators networks (also Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)), or some combination of these approaches. The proposers should assess some technological issues as well as economical issues in view of the replacement of
PPDR network in the future.
a topic for which PROSIMOS has already carried out a preliminary research.
Related Technologies
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