The Nationwide Wireless Priority Service (WPS) is a system in the United States that allows high-priority emergency telephone calls to avoid congestion on wireless telephone networks. This complements the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS), which allows such calls to avoid congestion on landline networks. The service is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission and administered by the Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) in the Department of Homeland Security. WPS was previously administered by the National Communications System (NCS) which had been created by President Kennedy by a Presidential Memorandum on August 21, 1963 and expanded by President Reagan by Executive Order 12472 on April 3, 1984. On July 6, 2012, President Obama signed Executive Order 13618, which eliminated the NCS as a separate organization; it was merged into the Office of Emergency Communications (OEC), which had been created in 2007. A ceremony to retire the colors of the NCS and to celebrate the legacy of the organization was held on August 30, 2012 in Arlington, VA.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
A mobile phone, cell phone, cellphone, or hand phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture, and, therefore, mobile telephones are called cellular telephones or cell phones, in North America. In addition to telephony, 2000s-era mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, MMS, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, business applications, video games, and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as feature phones; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
The Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) is a White House-directed emergency telephone service provided by a division of the Department of Homeland Security. GETS uses enhancements based on existing commercial technology.
During a local or national emergency, wireless telephone networks are likely to become congested with calls. Even absent emergencies, some towers and networks receive more calls than they can handle. WPS allows high-priority calls to bypass that congestion and receive priority by dialing *+272+DST_NUMBER+send (the 'star' key followed by 272 followed by the destination number followed by the dial key). The system is authorized only for use by National Security and Emergency Preparedness personnel, classified into five categories:
A vertical service code (VSC) is a sequence of digits and the signals star (*) and number sign (#) dialed on a telephone keypad or rotary dial to enable or disable certain telephony service features. Some vertical service codes require dialing of a telephone number after the code sequence. On a touch tone telephone, the codes are usually initiated with the star key, resulting in the commonly used name star codes. On rotary dial telephones, the star is replaced by dialing 11.
The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan that encompasses twenty-five distinct regions in twenty countries primarily in North America, including the Caribbean. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate in the NANP.
- Executive leadership and policy makers (e.g. the President of the United States and members of Congress)
- Disaster response/military command and control
- Public Health, safety, and law enforcement command
- Public services/utilities and public welfare
- Disaster recovery
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the Federal Government of the United States. The legislature consists of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Command and control or C2 is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... [that] employs human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization or enterprise, according to a 2015 definition by military scientists Marius Vassiliou, David S. Alberts and Jonathan R. Agre, The term often refers to a military system.
Unlike the GETS system, which provides landline priority telephone calls, participation in the WPS system is optional for telephone companies. As such, support is only available on selected networks and usually requires additional fees for activation, availability, and use.
Before using the system, each user must receive authorization from the National Communications System and subscribe to the service with a participating provider. Once authorized, a user simply needs to prepend calls the vertical service code of "*272" to receive priority consideration on the wireless network.
Although the system is said to ensure a high probability of call completion, it is not without serious limitations. The WPS will not preempt calls in progress, so the user will have to wait for bandwidth to open. It is also not yet supported by all carriers. In order for a call to work, telephone infrastructure must be powered and functioning. Finally, a call that receives priority using WPS does not automatically get priority on landline networks. Therefore, congestion on the Public Switched Telephone Network may prevent the call from completion unless the user makes additional steps to access the GETS service for landline calls as well. Because of these and other limitations, the WPS explicitly does not guarantee call completion.
