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Dec. 8, 2009

The mobile communications sector is working on delivering wireless emergency alerts thanks to new U.S. federal government action.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the FCC yesterday announced the adoption of new design specifications so that wireless carriers can provide government emergency alerts and warnings to their mobile users.

Overall, CMAS (the Commercial Mobile Alert System) will provide government officials the ability to send 90-character, geographically targeted text messages to the public regarding emergencies and warnings of imminent threats to life and property, Amber alerts and Presidential emergency messages.

The industry association praised the FCC and FEMA for their work on making the emergency alerts a reality.

“With today’s announcement, mobile service carriers will seize this opportunity to work on finishing the development, testing and implementation of this new alerting system to benefit all American residents,” said CTIA (the Cellular Telephone Industries Association) President Steve Largent.

“We strongly believe that the wireless industry can significantly beat the timeline set by the FCC and we are fully committed to doing just that. The industry is devoting the resources to roll out wireless emergency alerts as quickly as possible,” added Largent.

Originally mandated by the FCC in August of last year, the development period now starts for wireless service providers to develop, test and fully deploy the new alert system and deliver mobile emergency messages to the public by 2012 at the latest.

The program is voluntary and CTIA said it is already on top of things.

Overall, the FCC rules and regulations establishing the new alert system require an end-to-end architecture, in which a Federal Alert Aggregator/Gateway would receive, authenticate and format emergency alerts received by federal, state, tribal and local government agencies.

The alert system would then transmit them over a secure interface to gateways administered by participating commercial mobile service providers.

To fully ensure that persons with disabilities who subscribe to wireless services receive all emergency alerts, the FCC adopted rules last year that will require participating wireless carriers to transmit messages with both vibration functionality and audio attention signals as well.

The new alert system is viewed by some wireless industry observers as innovative and user friendly.

In a post-9/11 and Hurricane Katrina era, FEMA's and the FCC's initatives are welcomed by all industry players and wireless carriers.

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Source: FEMA and the FCC.