While I don't necessarily want the department of homeland security concerned with this, I do think that planning to for such an eventuality is a really good idea. If the continuation of our society were to rely heavily on critical services being preformed remotely as frequently as possible, then there should be a way to give that traffic priority over regular browsing and gaming.

While such a system would be very technically challenging to implement, it is not outside of the realm of possibility, given adequate planning, which is exactly why the GAO is criticizing DHS for not at least performing some planning.

The FCC absolutely should examine the way that telecommunication companies connect people over the "last mile" because their current practices are extremely deceptive. Cable companies are particularly bad since bandwidth is shared between customers resulting in far lower speeds than those advertised. Investment in infrastructure by telecommunication companies has, at least in the US, lagged significantly behind the increase in advertised connection speeds. Rather than relying on traffic shaping to ensure a mediocre experience for all customers, new capacity should be a priority so that actual observed bandwidth is closer to the claimed bandwidth. However, in an emergency, traffic shaping would absolutely be a necessity to ensure that critical functionality is maintained. Unfortunately, given our current infrastructure system, this would result in many customers having severely degraded service or none at all.

While on the surface, this article seems very Orwellian indeed, there is a strong argument to be made in favor of planning for the effects that a pandemic would have on all forms of infrastructure. In a pandemic involving a disease with a mortality rate approaching that of the Spanish Flu of 1918 (ONLY 2.5%) or of avian flu, which is a staggering 60%, people would rapidly confine themselves to their homes. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that, in this situation, the number of people telecommuting would increase drastically, which, coupled with the large increase in bandwidth caused by huge numbers of bored children and adults who are all at home, would a great deal of strain on our current internet infrastructure, especially in the last mile. Vital government and business functions would absolutely depend on their employee's ability to telecommute in such a situation. It the ability to respond to an emergency depends on the availability of infrastructure then it is prudent to have a plan in place to preserve the critical function of that infrastructure during an emergency. The internet would certainly be a vital part of the response to a pandemic, and it would be vital to the continued functioning of society during the the pandemic. Therefore, it seems profoundly important for the DHS, whose responsibility is, ostensibly, the preservation and protection of our society, to develop plans to preserve the critical functions of the internet. The ability of an engineer to monitor critical systems at a power plant remotely, or the communications of medical professionals dealing with the emergency would absolutely deserve priority over a connection to an online game or the ability to read the latest headlines.