The site to go to in order to get priority circuits is The Telecommunications Service Priority Program http://tsp.ncs.gov/ Any federal agency, including the FCC, can act as a sponsor. Information on the readiness of telecommunications can be found on the FCC's website www.fcc.gov/year2000/ The latest FCC Report, issued in October 1999, can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/year2000/telephoneb.html The latest NRIC Report, issued in November 1999, can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Miscellaneous/News_Releases/1999/nrmc9074.html The introduction to the NRIC Report states "Washington, D.C. - November 9, 1999, - The U.S. Telecommunications Industry is virtually complete with its Year 2000 remediation and implementation programs and local and long distance services are expected to continue to function on and after January 1, 2000. In its latest, public report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) IV announced that, based on input from telecommunications companies across the U.S., 100 percent of the switches, network elements and supporting software systems in the U.S. Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), owned by large, Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) and large, long distance Inter-Exchange Carriers (IXCs), have been made Y2K ready. While small- and mid-sized LECs trail their larger LEC counterparts in achieving Y2K readiness, the NRIC reported that most of these carriers should be compliant by the end of December 1999." NRIC has created a guide to contingency planning. This is a simple guide which can be followed by any communications network, including Internet networks. It is available for you to freely download and use. The guide can be found on the Focus Group I website http://www.nric.org/fg/fg1/index.html Look under subcommittee 3 for a collection of documents. You specifically want: "5.NRIC Contingency Planning Guidelines: A step-by-step guide that takes the user from the identification of critical business functions and infrastructure to the identification of high risk Y2K scenarios to the development and testing of contingency planning strategies and plans. (nric-cp-guide.doc, revised 1999-01-14, 461kB)" And yes, one of the messages of NRIC, the FCC, and the White House is please do not simply pick up your phone at midnight to see if there is dial tone. Robert Cannon Senior Counsel Office of Plans and Policy Federal Communications Commission rcannon@fcc.gov ______________________________________________ FREE Personalized Email at Mail.com Sign up at http://www.mail.com?sr=mc.mk.mcm.tag001