Telecommunication priority services

Telecommunication priority services provide priority access to telecommunications capabilities in support of national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP). Priority services in traditional wireline and wireless telecommunications enable users of these services to communicate in crises when the public switched telephone network (PSTN) may experience high network congestion or diminished network capacity.

Existing priority service architectures cover call origination, PSTN network access, transport, network egress, and call termination. As the telecommunications industry increases the use of IP-based telephony, and as the use of other IP-based communications (e.g., e-mail, IP-based video conferencing, and other Internet-based information exchange) become increasingly prominent in the NS/EP community, the need arises to support priority service in the IP domain.