**REMARKS OF\
COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS\
NETWORK RELIABILITY AND INTEROPERABILTY COUNCIL VII**

**MARCH 30, 2004**

Good morning. I join Chairman Powell in welcoming you here and in
thanking you for being a part of this newly-constituted NRIC. I'm going
to be very brief and say only three things.

First, there is no work that this Commission does anywhere across the
whole broad gamut of our involvements that matches in importance our
responsibilities to ensure the safety and workability of our nation's
communications systems in the face of homeland security and emergency
preparedness. The very first sentence of the Communications Act tells us
that the Act was written to make "available . . . a rapid, efficient,
Nation-wide and world-wide telecommunications service . . . for the
purpose of the national defense, for the purpose of promoting safety of
life and property though the use of wire and radio communication." This
seventy-year old statute couldn't be more timely than it has been in the
days since September 11, 2001. Getting this right---making sure our
communications systems work when the going gets tough and lives are at
stake---there's nothing else that we do that rises to ***that*** level.
By joining NRIC, you have bought into this challenge, you are a part of
it, and you have undertaken critically important work that may very well
become highly visible and intensely examined as time moves on.

Second, we have a long ways to go to in building systems
interoperability and in making sure back-up systems exist if one system
goes down. This is in no way to deride any of the good work that has
been done since September 11, and some good things have been
accomplished. It is rather to remind ourselves that this is an awesome
undertaking that requires constant attention and never-ending work. I
have visited with many police, fire, public safety and health care
responders over the past several months, trying to find out where we
really are in terms of making our systems truly interoperable and
redundant. I'll just say we have a ***long*** ways to go, and probably
not much time to get there.

I know that E911 is an important part of this NRIC's agenda. Americans
have long believed that help was just a 911 call away. As network
architectures evolve away from the PSTN model with numbers as universal
identifiers, we are challenged to ensure this remains a reality in the
age of IP communications. In the near term, too, there are challenges
that have dogged us for too long. Identifying ways to provide location
information to PSAPs for calls originating from multi-line telephone
systems comes immediately to mind. I'm glad you will be focusing on
this, but I'm also pleased to see that your charter doesn't abandon your
past good works and specifically charges you to continue to build on the
homeland security, wireless reliability and broadband deployment best
practices of your NRIC predecessors. These need to be implemented and I
don't believe that can be done without them being closely monitored and
constantly evaluated and updated when necessary. Best practices don't
always implement themselves, and here they must be implemented.

Third, I can't emphasize enough the urgency I feel about all this.
Anyone who thinks this country is through with terror is, I believe,
deluding themselves. Events of the past month overseas should only
deepen our concern. So I'd urge you to look at your work plan and see if
it can be accelerated, see if reports can be prepared ahead of schedule
and actions implemented even sooner than planned. If you need more help
or resources, tell us. If you think you or the Commission needs more
authority to accomplish what needs to be accomplished, tell us that,
too, so we can figure out how to proceed with the Congress.

This is preeminently a time for business and government to work
together. This is a concept that, now more than ever, needs our full
embrace. This is how, in fact, we built this great country of ours and
how we protected it against so many previous threats to our national
security. It's when we work together that America does its greatest
work. And that's exactly the kind of partnering we need now---and it's
the role that this council is well-suited to play. So I won't detain you
any further from your work, but I did want to stop by and thank you for
your willingness to participate in this important process and to tell
you how important I think it is and how anxious we are to work closely
with you. We're looking to you for a lot.