WASHINGTON – The federal government needs to develop a backup plan in case the nation’s communications infrastructure is disabled, warned Joe Wright, president of PanAmSat [Nasdaq: SPOT]. He said that satellites are a perfect platform to backup the terrestrial network if it were knocked out for any reason. But there needs to be federal coordination so the switchover can be done seemlessly within minutes, he added. Wright was speaking at a Nov. 6 meeting of the Media Security and Reliability Council set up to advise the Federal Communications Commission on telecom infrastructure security and vulnerability.

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