History of the Route Diversity Project

On September 11, 2001, terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, DC. Reports indicated that telecommunication assets near the affected areas were either congested or incapacitated, causing users to experience intermittent or no voice service. The reports of these events generated concern among White House officials that key federal agencies in Washington, DC might lose critical wire line voice and data communications services if the infrastructure was damaged or destroyed.

To highlight the concerns of the White House officials, the National Security Council (NSC) raised the issue of telecommunications resiliency in its meeting of October 5, 2001, stating—

“Key federal agencies may be at risk of losing wire line communications services in certain emergencies where telecommunications infrastructure gets damaged or destroyed.”

The NCS, which is responsible for ensuring National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) communications in times of network congestion or outage, addressed this concern by investigating the possibility of a route diversity capability for federal agencies. The NCS established the RDP (formerly known as the Backup Dial Tone Project) and took the following steps:

• Evaluated the need for a route diversity capability in the Washington, DC area and determined whether such a capability would have been helpful in the New York City and Washington, DC areas on September 11, 2001
• Evaluated various technical approaches to providing such a capability
• Determined the cost and schedule for deploying chosen technical approaches

The RDP has proven to be a constructive, valuable program in helping to address the NSC directive through its tools and capabilities and technology research.

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