Global interoperability of national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) telecommunications services

Emergency telecommunications services, which provide priority access to public telephony for those responding to emergency situations, have previously been offered in the U.S. and other countries around the world in the public switched telephone network and more recently in cellular telephone networks. This paper describes the implementation of these national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) services in a next-generation network (NGN) Internet-Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) environment. The implementation was tested during a global interoperability event. The tests’ results, and implications of the analysis of the test data to future developments, are discussed.