Phone Panel to Call for Costly Changes : Telecommunications: But some wonder whether the proposals to help prevent service outages will ever be implemented.

WASHINGTON —  A blue-ribbon panel studying the nation’s telephone system will recommend this week that the phone industry make costly investments in additional training and new equipment to improve network reliability and prevent future outages, officials said.

But with the Network Reliability Council seeking to disband itself after the release of its recommendations, some experts fear the proposals will never be carried out by an industry that has been downsizing in response to intense competition.

The behind-the-scenes conflict over the council is likely to revive debate over whether federal regulators and industry officials are doing enough to curb telephone outages.

The issue of system reliability came to the forefront in June, 1991, after back-to-back computer snafus knocked out service to millions of customers in Los Angeles, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., costing businesses and consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The council, a 31-member panel of consumer and industry officials appointed last year by the Federal Communications Commission, is expected to meet Wednesday in suburban Washington to issue seven detailed reports that recommend a number of steps for improving telephone system reliability.

According to officials familiar with the reports, the council will recommend that:

* The FCC endorse legislation to crack down on building contractors and others who fail to contact phone companies to determine the location of buried phone cable before digging. Such digging has resulted in breakage of phone lines, leading to some massive outages.

* The phone industry spend millions of dollars to diversify telephone routing switches to lines serving emergency numbers.

* Several technical modifications be made to telephone switching software and power supplies.

* Expensive new training programs for telephone personnel be established to minimize the human error that has contributed to a number of outages in recent years.

While the panel does not place a price tag on its recommendations, council Chairman Paul H. Henson, a former executive with long-distance provider Sprint, estimates that they would cost “a substantial amount. I’m sure it will (amount to) many millions and millions of dollars.”

The council voted 30 to 1 in April to ask the FCC to allow it to disband this month after releasing its findings. But FCC Chairman James H. Quello told the council in a letter last week that he could not approve the request. He indicated that a majority of FCC commissioners side with Ronald Binz, the lone panel member who voted against disbanding on grounds that continuing oversight is needed to ensure that the proposals are carried out.

“It would be a mistake” to jeopardize progress in telephone reliability by dissolving the panel now, Binz said.

Telephone system reliability “will not improve unless the carriers, in the main, adopt (the council’s) recommendations and implement the ‘best practices’ identified in these reports,” said Binz, director of the Office of Consumer Counsel for the state of Colorado.

A report issued in March by the General Accounting Office found that more than 1,000 telephone outages affected some 69 million customers in 1990 and 1991. More recent FCC data examined by The Times shows that 89 serious outages occurred during the last nine months of 1992, blocking calls placed on 35 different 911 emergency systems and disabling lines serving airports, military sites and nuclear facilities.

Industry representatives say the nation’s phone system is generally as reliable today as it was before the breakup of the Bell system nine years ago. But they acknowledge that critical parts of the network have become more vulnerable to major outages as a result of switching and computer coding technology that provides features such as caller ID and embryonic new services such as home shopping.

“I had previously thought the Network Reliability Council had served out its function,” said James S. Blaszak, a Washington lawyer who represents the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, a Washington-based group that represents 20 large corporate telephone users.

“Now I’m not so sure,” Blaszak said. “Our phone system is very good, but there is potential for improving it even at the margin. I think the council can serve a valuable role.”