Startup Developing Software To Restore Phone Service After Big OutagesStartup Developing Software To Restore Phone Service After Big Outages

Aided by a federal agency, a startup is developing technology as a backup communications network to keep individuals, companies, and governments in touch during disasters by seamlessly joining conventional phone lines and the Internet.

The software being developed by TeleContinuity Inc. represents a shift from traditional disaster-recovery and business-continuity systems that rely on location-based backup facilities and centralized telecom infrastructure, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is supporting the company in developing the technology through its Advanced Technology Program.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, TeleContinuity's founders realized that short-term emergency phone service could be activated quickly, on any scale, by cross-linking surviving phone-system links and Internet links as necessary, a technique they called shoelacing, according to NIST.

The terrorist attacks severely disrupted phone service in New York, where the collapse of the World Trade Center damaged a major local phone central office. Days later, many companies and individuals were still without phone service. During this same time, Internet connections remained active, using different lines and network architectures.

NIST says the initial version of the software for such an emergency system is designed to reroute a user's phone service within minutes of a major telephone outage by delivering the call to a remote phone, a cell phone, a computer, or a PDA. By next spring, TeleContinuity plans to develop an enhanced version of the software to let administrators and users monitor and control networks in an emergency with advanced Web-based controls. Ultimately, NIST says, commercialization of the technology will require a network of hundreds of nodes that can quickly link phone and data-network lines regardless of where an outage occurs.