“Sir I cannot hear you” – Air Traffic Management Out of Control?

Blogs May 21, 2025 |

The Problem

Unless you have been hibernating, you have heard about the recent voice communications outages in our multiple Air Traffic Control centers. You remember voice communications, don’t you? Invented in the 19th century and eulogized many times as shinier objects take center stage, voice  is a critical means of communication especially in the financial industry and in command and control. While E911 and other services evolve to include SMS, video, and other features, connecting to a human being on a reliable system that is clear, simple to use, and recorded for compliance is still the foundation of critical communication. So then why is century old technology failing so often and putting people lives in danger? Voice is looked down upon by today’s technology elite. It does not attract investment. No one wants to make hardware. Everything has migrated to the cloud. While these may not be negative developments, there are legacy systems that are no longer supported that are aging and may not be easily migrated to the cloud. Voice system manufacturers are abandoning their embedded base every day and summarily ending product lines with little to no warning. Some will argue that we took a very simple technology, analog voice, and made it extremely complex with VOIP and its many considerations. Yes, it reduced the costs for consumer and general business, however for critical communications, it reduced the number of vendors and the market size for those vendors thus driving up the price. Government specifications can be complex, and those requirements may not exist in this APP culture and thus drive higher cost customized solutions where once the same PBX provided overlays for every market segment. So how do all those issues manifest to create the crisis we have seen unfold over the last few weeks? Some level of government issues a Request for Proposal (RFP) that requires technologies and methods that may no longer be available and have to be created for modern platforms. Government bids can take years to create, garner responses, decide, procure, and implement. Many large governmental contractors and integrators take the approach to bid low and make more money in change orders. This drives up costs and elongates the time for deployment, often by years. Antiquated legacy systems must now survive even longer, may not be properly supported, and have contracted service providers scouring online auction sites for spare parts. Add to that the reduction in qualified staffing for cost savings, and it can culminate in a perfect storm of 90-second service failures to critical voice infrastructure at Air Traffic Control towers. ...

The Solution

The technology problem is not difficult to solve. However, the implementation is often likened to repairing the engine on an airplane in mid-flight. The legacy system should remain untouched. Its delicate status combined with the need for it to operate in a critical environment means high risk to any well-intentioned interim repair. The new system is not production ready and must be extensively tested so as not to introduce new issues. What can be done is to introduce an interim parallel system that leverages the reliable portions of the old solution and provides an alternative that is always available. Bridging the past, the present and the future is the sweet spot for some vendors. Technologies such as gateways, and protocol conversion can provide that evolutionary step from the legacy world to the new world on an interim basis without migrating the entire solution. By inserting these technologies and integrating them via a standards-based API, business continuity is achieved while disaster recovery efforts are conducted in parallel. Properly handled, it can be transparent to the user.

We must rely on publicly available information and make some assumptions. The first assumption is that the failure was only at the voice system. Secondly, we can assume that radar, geospatial data, and the integration of that data to air traffic control center operational systems – all continued to perform. Third, we can assume that the VHF radio network was up and reliably running. Finally, we can assume that the same radar and geospatial data can be presented to another system. Detection of a failure may also be possible which could trigger an automated switch over to the interim system. Or you can simply put a backup device on each desktop. The best backup is one that is always available and requires no intervention.

By taking that same data and matching it to the aircraft identification and geospatial coordinates, a new system can transfer that call to a specific controller in a specific region. A new conference is then created between the aircraft and the controller. It can be handed off as the location changes to a new center, and integrated chat/IM/SMS/Email or any other alert can be triggered and every event logged as desired. A simple example of this is E911 where your phone number is looked up in a database and an address is matched and overlayed on a map and is instantly presented to the E911 operator, then to police, fire, or emergency service dispatching.
If the controller is connected to the new bridge, and the new bridge is connected to the legacy voice service and the VHF radio via Radio Over Internet Protocol (ROIP) Gateways, then a failure of the old system will never even be noticed. Or both systems can exist in parallel. It can work either way, whichever is the best operational fit for the circumstances.

Conclusion

Although this may seem oversimplified, the concept is sound. The variable is a vendor. When you require a partner with extensive aviation emergency experience, who has had thousands of ports in service spanning multiple years without a single failure you turn to XOP Networks. XOP Networks has been providing RFCS (Ringdown Firebar Conferencing Service) to global airports both civilian and military (including the US DoD) for decades, allowing them to achieve FAA regulatory compliance. Their Universal Services Node (USN) provides Mass Notification to municipalities and schools, provides Command and Control conferencing during rocket launches and provides secure trader voice services to financial institutions on Wall Street. Their REST API allows for the integration of 3rd party software and data for additional features and functionality and enhancements to services outlined above. It can operate in a highly available configuration in the cloud, on servers in a datacenter, or a hybrid configuration. It can integrate with existing directories and identity systems, and integrates with recorders, transcribers, and analytic systems.

So why hasn’t a similar solution been put in place yet? Great question. Anyone who is interested can contact XOP at (972) 590-0200, at sales@xopnetworks.com, or at our website at https://www.xopnetworks.com/. XOP Networks, an American company, located in Dallas Texas, and ready to roll up their sleeves and help solve this problem, and already has an extensive track record of helping to keep passengers safe in an emergency.

Bill Wagner is a financial industry technology consultant with over 30 years’ experience as an industry executive in hardware, software, engineering, operations, R&D, product development and introduction, and strategic development.