Next Century Cities Publishes Report on Natural Disasters and Network Resilience

With Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment planning well underway one thing many states and communities need to keep at the top of their minds is how to build network resilience and natural disaster planning into their initial proposals. In his October 2023 report entitled Wildfires, Natural Disasters & Network Resilience, Next Century Cities’ Senior Policy Counsel, Ryan Johnston detailed why network resilience planning must be a coordinated effort between providers, network operators, and all levels of government in order to ensure that stakeholders are properly informed when natural disasters occur.

The report explores three steps that federal, state, and local lawmakers can take, and how industry can play a part in resilience planning:

1. Network Upgrades: The report urges providers and infrastructure owners to replace aging or outdated network gear. Taking a proactive approach ensures that in the event of a disaster, network infrastructure can operate and continue to provide service when outdated networking equipment would be susceptible to failure.
2. Local Coordination: Collaboration between state, local, and private entities can have multiple beneficial effects, such as open communications channels, free data and information sharing which can help speed repair efforts and emergency services deployment.
3. Federal Leadership: The FCC and Congress must promote a national floor for information sharing and resilience planning. Without clear rules of the road, we will continue to see a patchwork of resilience plans that prioritize separate governmental and industry planning rather than meaningful collaboration.

As natural disasters and cyber threats become more prevalent, ensuring that new and existing network deployments are able to stand up to the new external demands placed on them is essential. Without robust collaborative planning and common sense infrastructure updates, our most important communications lifelines will continue to fail when people need them the most.

You can read the press release for the report here, and find the full report here.