"Cellphone usage by the general public in emergency situations results in congestion in wireless networks, which has prevented national security and emergency response personnel from obtaining access during emergencies and natural disasters," the N.C.S. said in a statement at the time, adding that when landline networks are damaged, cellphones may be clogged further. Yesterday, Stephen Barrett, an N.C.S. spokesman, said that the talks were stalled. "Right now we can't do much of anything, because we are still working on negotiations."
Discussions about virtually turning over cellphone networks to the government in an emergency have been under way for several years, federal officials said, but plans were accelerated after Sept. 11.
In New York, dozens of cellphone towers were knocked out of service at the trade center, as well as emergency communications systems on the roof of the north tower. Government officials say that as few as one in every 20 calls connected that day. In addition, 200,000 regular telephone lines were knocked out after a Verizon central office near the trade center was damaged, further hurting emergency communications.
Government officials said that the priority system had the support of The New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, which all suffered major communications problems in the days after the attacks when their offices were destroyed or phone service went down because of Verizon's problems.
N.C.S. officials said that the initial system they were working on would guarantee that 2,000 government officials in Washington, New York and Salt Lake City would be able to make wireless calls in an emergency. It would later be expanded to give priority to calls from 15,000 government workers in each city and then 50,000 workers in each city, officials said. The N.C.S. goal is to have a nationwide system in place by 2002.
Under the system outlined by the N.C.S., government officials would be given an access code to allow priority calls. Each code would be assigned one of five priority levels.
The system will not be unlike the one for regular landline calls, which gives priority to calls from certain telephone numbers. The main difference for consumers, would be that the cellular networks have nowhere near the capacity of landline networks, making it more likely that most of the public would not be able to use cellphones in an emergency.