Bennett Committee Holds Hearing on Y2K in Telecommunications Industry

(August 3, 1998)  The Senate Special Committee on Year 2000 Technology Problem, chaired by Sen. Bob Bennett, held a hearing in Washington DC on Friday, July 31, on compliance in the telecommunications industry.

The hearing was substantially similar to recent hearings held by the Senate Commerce Committee and by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) stated at the outset that,

"I have great concerns that our global telecommunications infrastructure can ride out the millennium date change without significant disruptions for three reasons. First, it is a highly complex system of systems. Second is the fact that there is no identifiable US public or private body taking the lead on the global aspects of the Y2K telecommunications problems. Lastly, is the fact that to have successful communications, both parties must be able to send and receive information. It is not enough to be ready just yourself."

The lead witness, Judith List, of Bellcore, testified that "all Bellcore supported software, systems products, either are now, or will be, by the end of 1998, year 2000 functional."   Bellcore provides communications software, engineering, consulting and training services.

List also stated that basic phone and data service is unlikely to be disrupted on January 1, 2000.  However, some operations and administration functions might be.   She testified:

"Y2K vulnerabilities in the telecommunications network do not appear to be in the fundamental call set-up and processing or data routing capabilities of the network.   Rather they appear to be in the operations, administration, and maintenance functions that support these fundamental capabilities.  While this suggests that getting basic dialtone at midnight on January 1, 2000 is less likely to be a problem, it is possible, in my opinion, that there may be disruptions in billing, processing service orders, and so on.  In addition, continued difficulties with operations, administration, and maintenance functions could eventually impact service." 

List recommended that the Congress pass "safe harbor legislation."  She said that "Such legislation would be designed to protect responsible companies from some of the torrent of litigation we know is headed our way -- much of which could be frivolous and could distract attention and divert resources from the most critical work: fixing the problem."

Similarly, FCC Commissioner Michael Powell, testified that "the legal liability issue is one of the most serious impediments that continues to impede the flow of timely and candid information.  ... We support efforts to pass legislation that would promote the exchange of information by limiting the way such information could be used against the company."

Ramu Potarazu, of INTELSAT, encouraged "implementation of any legislation that can help alleviate some of the potential legal liabilities that have created a "chilling effect" on the remediation of Year 2000 issues."  Gerald Roth (GTE) and Joseph Castellano (Bell Atlantic) both endorsed the Administration's Year 2000 Information Disclosure Act.

The witnesses who testified included:

• Judith List, VP of Integrated Technology Solutions, Bellcore.
• Michael Powell, Commissioner, FCC.
• Jack Edwards, Co-chair, President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.
• Diane Fountain, Dep. Manager, National Communications Systems.
• Joseph Castellano, President of Network and Corporate Systems, Bell Atlantic.
• Gerry Roth, VP, Technology & Systems, GTE.
• Ramu Potarazu, VP and CIO, INTELSAT.
• Gary Beach, Publisher, CIO Magazine.
  

Opening Statement of Sen. Bob Bennett.
Re: Hearing on Y2K Problems in Telecommunications.
Date: July 31, 1998.
Source: Office of Sen. Bob Bennett.  This document was created by scanning a paper copy, and converting it to HTML.

CONTACT: Mary Jane Collipriest, 202-224-5444, Washington, D.C. 20510

Opening Statement
Senator Bob Bennett, Chairman
Special Senate Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem
Hearing: Communicating the Challenge of the Year 2000
July 31, 1998

Good morning, and welcome to the fourth hearing on the Year 2000 Technology Problem. To date, we have held hearings on energy utilities, financial services industries, and health care. Future hearings will include transportation, general government services, and general business issues.

Let me begin today's hearing by noting that the global telecommunications infrastructure is the central nervous system of modern society. Daily, 270 million Americans depend on this complex web of voice, data, and video services that enable their telephones, radios, fax machines, computer networks, televisions and other information appliances. Major national and international enterprises, such as emergency response, national security, finance, transportation, health care, government, energy distribution, and others, are critically dependent on reliable, 24 hours a day, seven days a week telecommunications.

Without these services, our ability to receive, gather and respond to information would be as limited as it was for our ancestors before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Some critical enterprises which depend upon telecommunications services include: the National Weather Service; the Department of Defense; the Federal Reserve Board & Wall Street; the National Airspace System; the American Red Cross's Blood Service and the United Network for Organ Sharing; the national electric power grid; and on and on.

However, I have great concerns that our global telecommunications infrastructure can ride out the millennium date change without significant disruptions for three reasons. First, it is a highly complex system of systems. Second is the fact that there is no identifiable US public or private body taking the lead on the global aspects of the Y2K telecommunications problems. Lastly, is the fact that to have successful communications, both parties must be able to send and receive information. It is not enough to be ready just yourself.

With regard to the complexity of global telecommunications, the sheer number of players illustrates the problem. Today in the United States, there are five long distance carriers (not including the growing number of long distance resellers), five major national television broadcasters, six Regional Bell Operating Companies, more than one thousand small phone companies, 16 communications satellite providers, more than 4500 hundred Internet Service Providers and hundreds of cellular phone companies, thousands of broadcast radio stations and over eleven thousand cable services companies. And this just captures the infrastructure of the United States and does not include the thousands of large and small communications equipment manufacturers.

Finally, it must be pointed out that this infrastructure relies on hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. It is too great a leap of faith to believe that all the elements of an endeavor this complex will be ready at the stroke of midnight just 17 months from today, especially in the light of the limited readiness the industry has shown to this committee.

As for coordination and oversight of telecommunications, let me note something from a 1995 National Research Council report(1).

"In 1984 it was quite clear what the telecommunications/information infrastructure was and who defined it. It was, in essence , the telephone and broadcast networks. The defining players were AT&T, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the broadcasters. You got only the connectivity and services that were offered; compared with what is available today, it was not much.

All of this has changed radically. Instead of being defined by monopoly suppliers and regulators, the telecommunications infrastructure has become more closely defined by both market demand and the explosion of supporting technologies that have been brought to market by myriad suppliers. There has been much movement away from a supplier-defined infrastructure to a user- and market defined infrastructure."

In this new world of telecommunications which has given rise to a revolution in new services, no one party is charged with the task of assuring the reliability and interoperability of the entire network. This has made the millennium bug a much harder beast to squash as it only has to show up in one link in a communications chain to cause mayhem.

Finally, let me return to the two-way nature of telecommunications. Simply put, if the long distance carrier is up and running, but the regional carrier is down, the long distance call doesn't go through. If the Internet backbones are working, but the local Internet Service Provider is off-line, the World Wide Web is inaccessible to the user. And if a financial payment can be received in New York, but it cannot be sent from overseas, the transaction will not occur.

Like it or not, there is a link-to-link connectivity that starts locally, goes regionally, continues on nationally, and finally, ends internationally in this network upon which telecommunications and the enterprises supported by telecommunications critically depend. I am expecting today's panels to tell us how they are going to take charge and address this challenge. Getting telecommunications ready for the Year 2000 is a massive task that will require tremendous cooperation and coordination, but it is a task we must complete.

(1) The Changing Nature of Telecommunications/Information Infrastructure, The National Academy Press, 1995.