Slashdot Mirror
Emergency Broadcast System Coming To Cell Phones
gambit3 writes "The Emergency Broadcast System that interrupts TV programming in times of crisis is jumping to a new format where it might be able to reach you better — on your cell phone. The communications company Alcatel-Lucent announced Tuesday that it's creating a Broadcast Message Center that will allow government agencies to send cell phone users specific information in the event of a local, state or national emergency. It will be similar to the TV alerts in that the text messages will be geographically targeted for areas where a tornado alert or major road closure, for example, is in effect."
will you have to pay for incoming texts? and maybe even roaming text fees as well?
Will it still work if you have texts blocked? (as to not have to pay for incoming texts?)
Reverse 911 is fantastic. Just ask our neighboring town to the south that didn't use it when their water supply was contaminated. Yeah. My coworkers spent two days in the bathroom instead of 10 seconds reading a text.
Alcatel-Lucent will use the GPS chip in smart phones and estimate the speed at which these phones are traveling and also the text typing patterns and pauses and correlate it with the zigs and zags of the GPS trace. Once it determines it is the case of texting-while-driving it will automatically call 9-1-1 and have an ambul^H^H^H^H^H mortuary van following the car to scrape the remains of the driver off the road.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You guys do realize that EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) was replaced by EAS in 1997, and is now being replaced by CAP (Common Alerting Protocol)... Guess nobody does pay attention to them when they blast em out of the radio or TV... The reason it *CAN* soon go to mobile devices is because CAP is an IP based distribution system instead of an "over the air" distribution system.
...because unlike the mobile phone network we require a huge infrastructure, high maintenance costs and the careful coordination of government and industry.
oh, wait...
The Emergency Broadcast System that interrupts TV programming in times of crisis... It will be similar to the TV alerts in that the text messages will be geographically targeted for areas where a tornado alert or major road closure, for example, is in effect."
I hope they peg down the geography a lot better. I'm sick of getting severe weather warnings from TV stations half a continent away.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"This is a test of the local emergency cell phone text system. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, hopefully you haven't disabled text alerts in the middle of the night after receiving all our obnoxious tests."
It sounds like this would be rendered largely moot by DOT plans to disable cell phones in cars.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
How is this any different from a mobile-specific reverse 911?
I'm hoping a channel for voice and text will go away, just give me a fast data connection and I'll pick my own services to use. In which case a better system for emergencies would be to disseminate EB messages over a couple different popular channels (facebook, skype, IM) and let people choose their own way to be contacted.
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
I'm curious as to how they plan to implement it, especially because some people do a lot of moving across the country. Will it be able to warn people who are vacationing (or on business trips, etc) of emergency alerts where they are, as opposed to back at home? The article mentions "geographical targeting," but gives no indication of whether this will be done with real-time information as opposed to phone registration data.
Umm, what? There's already cell broadcast messages already defined in the original GSM spec!
No need to reinvent the wheel!
These were planned to be used from emergency systems to location specific advertising. Anyone have any idea why it was never used for anything?
Bot Assisted Blogging
It seems like there is some kind of a alert or another on television about 60% of the time (the other 40% being ads, when a life-saving warning is obviously impossible).
Anyway, I can't say my watching experience is enhanced a week later, when I sit down to peruse the TiVo.
Yes, I can see that it is raining outside.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I work indirectly for the Civil Defense in my state (disaster control). And I can say that the ability to be able to warn all people in a given area that they must seek shelter or where to seek help after a disaster are priceless.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
How long before the access control to this is subverted and nationwide penis enhancement texts start arriving?
I'll take 3 weeks after deployment.
You mean you don't welcome our new disaster-warning-texting overlords?
After the VA Tech shootings, a lot of college campuses implemented an emergency alert system that includes text messages to students and employees. My campus is one of them. The system is not geographically-aware but rather subscription-based, and so far all I've received are test messages (they announce the tests by email a few days in advance), sometimes synchronized with on-campus sirens. But it seems to work.
.sig withheld by request
Did you not see the part in the summar about "It will be similar to the TV alerts in that the text messages will be geographically targeted"? I suspect that they'll broadcast messages to those phones that are within reception of a given cell tower, not for cell numbers mapped to addresses in a given area.
I want to be in a large, busy area like a crowded mall or a large outdoor event when one of these alerts gets sent out. For some reason, the thought of seeing almost everyone stop and reach for their cell phone at the same time just seems incredibly cool to me.
How about when you're standing in the middle of a large outdoor event and 30,000 people all get a serious warning message all at once? Does panic stampede sounds as cool?
One of the common reasons that is given for having no earthquake alert system is that we can only predict an earth quake a matter of seconds in advance.
The idea of sending a text message to peoples cell phones, if done with some automated system, could potentially be used for this.
Though the question is how bogged down the cell networks would get, or if they'd have some sort of universal-packet where the cell-towers simply broadcast it to all phones, rather than targeting each phone individually.
Oh how modern. We've had that here in Europe for years.
-- Cheers!
This is of course information that the cell companies have for any call (it is how they triangulate where a distress call comes from), and it would make the most sense for something like that. If they instead decided it by area code (or even area code + exchange prefix), it would be really quite useless since people tend to be mobile with their cell phones and likely wouldn't be interested in a disaster that is thousands of miles away at that moment.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They should change the background color on your phone to the new threat level. e.g. when the level changes from yellow to orange, your phone background becomes orange, immediately letting you know to take the appropriate action such as heading to Home Depot to stockpile duct tape and plastic sheeting. For extra credit the phone could provide you with directions to the nearest hardware store.
This scheme may conflict with *Amber* Alerts, however.
If I get a text about a giant tornado headed my way, do you honestly think I care if they charge me 20 cents for the "head's up"?
This system is called ETWS (Earthquake Tsunami Warning System in Release-8 networks, i.e. LTE and PWS in Release-9. It is being pushed mainly by Japanese cellular operators (NTT DoCoMo, etc) and is probably used already in Japan.
Even better, if you and your party are in different areas, only one of you may get the alert, and both of you will get a dropped call.
Consider how TiVos behave: kicking you out of your recording and into live TV and holding you there for the duration of the test. Sometimes repeatedly depending on the test being performed.
Now imagine it happening during a 911 call for rescue with a dying cell battery.
Of course, I don't think the cell networks could handle sending individual alerts to every handset. The network will need support for sending one godzillagram to which every cell will respond in a one-way party line. And a way to secure it so that a merry prankster can't issue his own with a rogue transmitter.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
About a month or two ago (maybe longer,i lose track) a company called "Nixie" put in service (with the city and county of Honolulu) a text and/or email alert service.
Story from local paper: http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/global/story.asp?s=12921149
No todo lo que es oro brilla
What if that tornado tiggers 5 + texts do you want pay $1 or more per storm? and lots more if are roaming text roaming can be $0.50+ per text.
OMG! A toradno iz comin. proced 2 teh nearest evacushun sheltr
The idea of this system is to have information after a tragedy has occurred. So it actually is designed to calm people and stopped them from panicking. The idea is to keep them inform and connected when all other media has failed. Think of: blackouts, earthquakes, floodings.
I think that's a bogus scenario. If it's a really severe weather event people aren't going to be outside. If it's a nuclear war, I don't really care about the mob.
I was more thinking something like a systemwide test. And maybe you mean does a panicked stampede sound as cool? Or perhaps "panic stampede" is some kind of new band and in that case I haven't heard them and don't know how cool they sound.
I heard about this idea back in *1989* from a guy that was trying to get tornado warnings onto cell phones. The cell sites in the effected area are usually pretty well known, and if those sites are linked to phones, the phones gets a message. Easy, obvious, incredibly useful, SAVES LIVES!
And here we are still talking about implementing it 20+ years later!
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I can see overloaded phone lines as everyone will be calling them back to figure out what they were actually saying.
"Hi I got your text, GT OT VCANO ERPT N 15 MIN TKE UR FAM N PTZ 2 HGHR GRND"
. .
I'm actually working on the handset side of this, so I can answer some of the questions people have about it.
It's really not that complicated of a system. It uses Cell Broadcast Services (CBS) which are part of the existing 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards. Some of you may have seen CBS applications in your phones, but they're typically not used in the U.S. CBS is, as its name implies, a broadcast service.. so obviously it's one-way only. If your phone isn't "subscribed" to the particular message identifier (a kind of topic or category), or your phone isn't on when the message is broadcast, you'll miss it. The system has different classifications for messages, from nationwide alerts, to local alerts (like hurricanes), to AMBER alerts. There can't really be any way for operators to charge for broadcast messages, any more than they can charge for other broadcast resources like paging channels, so I think the only way your bill would be affected would be if they do some blanket 10 cent "government" fee for everyone... By the way, the reason they are using CBS is because it does not place a strain on the network, like sending millions of SMS messages at once would (that's important in a disaster situation when people might be overloading the network).
The special handling on the handset side is to take some specific actions when an emergency message is received.. it has to play a special tone and vibration, among other things. You can opt-out of pretty much all messages, so don't get too worried about being woken up in the middle of the night for AMBER alerts (well, unless you want to receive them). The system supports a monthly test message, but you wouldn't be opted-in to those by default.
The nature of the cell network allows operators to broadcast the messages to specific cells, so you are not going to get alerts for things happening elsewhere in the country. But the design also allows for national (presidential-level) distribution, so yes, in those cases, everybody would get the alert. The network-side of things is more interesting than the handset side, because of how different levels of the government need to be able to send alerts, and this is mostly what the article talks about (although it's short on details).
If you have other questions, reply and I can try to answer them.
touch-tone dialling fee
Really?
I can imagine this being useful for tornado warnings, but please not for closed roads.
Also there are messages that will show up on your screen and not as just 'incoming message'. At least I was able to send/receive those several years ago when using my PC and the Nokia software.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Tornadoes have a tendency to blow up in what seems to be "decent weather" conditions.
Canada has touch tone dialing? wow...
Assuming they are for a reasonable range, maybe the Amber alerts will at least be more useful on cell phones. I find the ones on TV extremely annoying because I can guarantee no lost child is in my house in view of my tv.
That's fair. I don't recall hearing any stories of stampeding mobs because tornado sirens went off though.
Imagine if everyone attending the basketball game at the Georgia Dome in March 2008 had gotten a text message of "EF2 tornado coming!".
It wasn't pandemonium there because the storm came & went before anyone knew WTF was going on.
Actually, in an area with multiple counties you would see an alert for each county. The alerts can vary depending on if they are a watch or warning. Typically, a storm alert with heavy rains will also insight alerts for different types of alerts (such as hail, flooding, ice, etc). Now, toss in the required weekly alerts and this could generate a fairly large number of messages.
All in all, if you are a re-distribution point which covers multiple counties there can be upwards of 30 to 40 entries for a small storm which can keep the equipment buzzing for a while.
I do not miss dealing with EAS systems at all...
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I find the ones on TV extremely annoying because I can guarantee no lost child is in my house in view of my tv.
Given your user name, I would suspect that the last five words you said are an important qualifier.
Better yet, wait until the National Weather Service gets in on the deal, every weather alert will mean a message every hour. These will of course include "OMG It's snowing in Upstate NY, everyone panic, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!".
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Well, I've never been to Virgina, but it looks like Norfolk and Elizabeth City are only about 40 miles apart or so.
As I live in Denver, a 40 mile drive is just a few minutes longer than my daily commute. If there are tornadoes near my work and I'm at home, you bet your ass I want to know about it. Likewise, if I'm driving home, I can't hear the tornado sirens in Denver, and it would be nice to know if they're going off or not.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Do I get to register preferences about what messages I will want to receive, or will some wanker with authority decide that for me? The last thing I want is for the person who decides which messages are important being of the same mindset as the nimrod who thought passengers at an airport need to be reminded every 5 minutes exactly what the list of banned items on airplanes are - again and again and again and again while you wait for your flight. (What's really dumb about that recorded TSA message is that it interrupts other PA messages that are NOT repetitive and thus should have higher priority. What's more important - the message that is identical to the one you heard 5 minutes ago and will hear again 5 minutes from now, or the message that's unique and you'll only hear once? You should never stifle the one-off message with the repeated one, and yet that's what airports do. (I just returned from a trip where I heard my name on the PA trying to tell me something and it got interrupted like this and I never found out what it was about until it was too late. It turns out I had gotten a standby slot on a flight, but missed the chance because the PA system was designed by morons who think recorded repeated messages take precedence.))
Anyway, I don't want the same sort of moron deciding what messages come to my phone (or worse yet, which ones are allowed to interrupt a phone call) without my say-so.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
How about when you're standing in the middle of a large outdoor event and 30,000 people all get a serious warning message all at once? Does panic stampede sounds as cool?
I vote for watching the traffic cams on an LA freeway. Micheal Bay wouldn't be able to touch it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Wow. that will be quite annoying when I'm a passenger trying to make a call from a taxicab on my way to a meeting.
Reply to That ||
The only time the US was actually under attack, they didn't use it. Other news sources are far faster and more efficient. Like my local paper that allows me to subscribe to SMS cell-phone updates.
See the WikiPedia article for more information on why national EBS is near useless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_broadcast_system
I'm pretty sure that no network has any single tower that covers multiple counties. As other posters have pointed out, these alerts would likely be handled at the tower level. Thus, it is unlikely that your phone would receive 30 alerts for one small storm.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
"Don't Panic. All the houses in your subdivision have burned down. Don't bother going home..."
I think an alert system is supposed to alert you to dangerous things before they kill you, not try to keep you from panicking after you're dead.
It's Christmas At Ground Zero -- Weird Al.
But you don't know how it will work in practice.
My cell area code is no where near where I live. Even the billing address (paid by my work) is in another state. I'd hate to start getting notifications from the area where headquarters is.
I hope (and suspect) that it is tower dependent. It may well be, because it is Alcatel-Lucent doing it (hardware vendor).
Its clearly(?) not JUST a software solution that could be cranked in at the Carrier's headquarters.
(Those carrier wide SMS solutions are not fast enough to do this, and they swamp the Signaling channel upon which SMS are delivered, meaning no incoming phone calls can be signaled just when you may need them most).
So it sounds like they are going to introduce something else at the radio tower level.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
...of the emergency broadcast system.
this got introduced in Australia (at least Victoria) after the bushfires nearly 2 years ago.
would have been better before the fires, but nm.
it doesn't cost the user anything, costs a trivial amount to the gov't (when you take into account the running around they have to do before sending the warning, the cost of actually sending it is not bad), and it hasn't been abused so far.
basically you get (or maybe not, or maybe you get it hours late) a message saying "WARNING. EXTREME WEATHER ALERT AT 8PM. STAY INDOORS" or something of the kind.
i think only 1 warning was sent when there were some very hot gale force winds in the city. it was probably more as a test than anything.
they didn't send one when the bowling ball sized hail smashed all our cars up though.
So, will it also warn me that by reading the ever urgent disaster warning about the catastrophic road failure while driving will then cause another catastrophe?
Cell Broadcast is a standard feature of GSM that has been there since the start. Usually the only feature enabled is area code or area name, but there is support designed in for all kinds of information services. At least on GSM networks, it would be foolish to use anything else. The tricky bit will be to automatically subscribe existing phones to the new emergency alert service, unless there has always been a code reserved for this and phones are already automatically subscribed to it.
If it's a really severe weather event people aren't going to be outside.
I take it you're not from the midwest. Tornadoes can spring up even in relatively good conditions. For example, I was at a college football game when a tornado touched down only a few miles south of the stadium.
However, that event is a great example of why the GP is full of crap. Tornado sirens went off, and 30,000+ people managed to calmly move to shelter in the nearby basketball facility. Nobody was so much as scratched. There was some concern later when reports came in that spectators weren't sure what to do, but personally I thought it was handled fine. I also thought it was hilarious that when the all clear was given later, everybody just went back and the game continued.
Anyone want to start a pool on how long it will take someone to crack the system and start sending bogus alerts?
I have this at my University. If you so choose to provide your telephone number to the online database, you will receive a text. This is helpful is helpful during tornado warnings or other emergency situations. It is not often used, but it is comforting to know that if something were to occur at a time that I didn't have computer or television access, I would receive the alert immediately.
Cell Broadcast is a standard feature of GSM that has been there since the start. Usually the only feature enabled is area code or area name, but there is support designed in for all kinds of information services. At least on GSM networks, it would be foolish to use anything else. The tricky bit will be to automatically subscribe existing phones to the new emergency alert service, unless there has always been a code reserved for this and phones are already automatically subscribed to it.
Yes, well, with my luck they'll finally roll it out just as 2012 hits, and the first message I get will be: "You are about to die."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
... except for those of us with a technophobe phone
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Parent is correct.
We a system like this in Australia for emergency warnings: bushfires, cyclones etc. It works by sending an SMS to all phones currently connected to specific cell towers in the emergency area, irrespective of network, phone number or anything else.
This is actually a very accurate way of doing things: it guarantees noone outside that area (well, further than a few dozen km away) will receive an unnecessary warning.
I thought the push message functionality does and is for exactly this?
Not having a television, I have only seen "amber alerts" on highway signs telling me to look for license plate numbers, so presumably they are looking for stolen cars?
If cell phones cost money to call -- and widely varying costs at that -- how would I, the caller, know whether I am having to call someone, or how much the call would cost? That is why the costs reside entirely with the recipient.
Hahahahahahaha "Amber Alerts", "Tornado Warnings", SPAM? don't make me LMAO too much.
"The Emergency Broadcast System that interrupts TV programming in times of crisis" HA!
CRISIS MY ASS the only time i ever saw these damn things was the fucking annoying tests running 2-3 times a day. (Conveniently run during the height of the plot of some show)
They didn't even run the damn thing on 09/11/2001, So what would constitute an "Emergency" for this so called govt. money (possibly millions$) sink-hole called "EBS" anyway?
I'm glad i switched from Cable to Satellite (DirectTV will have me as a customer just for the fact that they don't running these damn things)
Actually, originating from a tri-state area I can assure you that it is entirely possible for a tower to cross multiple counties.
Having dealt with EAS and depending on the configuration there can be several alerts.
At no point did I say a phone would receive 30 alerts, but it would generally be more then 5 for inclement weather.
Typically, there is a great deal of filtering that happens after a re-distributed signal is received. Depending on the configuration there can be a lot of clutter that isn't necessary required, but could be potentially passed on.
You can refute my claims all you want, but they are based actual experience in a real environment.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
As important as major road closures and tornadoes are, it is illegal to text and drive at the same time where I live. Thank you, government, for forcing me to either break the law, or drive on closed roads and fly around in tornadoes.
I am constantly miffed by annoying tests that interrupt programs. Now a test will go nuts in movies, school, church and gosh knows what and at what hour.
If it is going to be important the alert for say a tornado MUST be loud as heck. But how the heck can the phone tell a test from a real alarm.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
vast flocks of sheeple. What could possibly go wrong?
I can send anyone on Earth a SMS with any 14 char numeric or 11 char alphanumberic sender within seconds. Forging this is easier than faking Caller ID via our Asterisk.
If you want to worry then you can worry about a non-service provider controlled cell tower spewing out broadcast text messages. Think what a Sanford Wallace could do with that. There was a slashdot article a while ago about a home brewed GSM cell tower. If it can handle calls it probably could send these broadcast texts messages too. The FCC CMAS website is here: http://www.fcc.gov/pshs/services/cmas.html
Good question. The broadcast message contains more in it than just the text, see for example 3GPP TS 23.041. The phones use the message identifier field to decide what cadence to use when handling different types of broadcast messages.
Well, every place else I am aware of has dedicated "area codes" or prefixes
for mobile phone numbers, so you know just by looking at the phone number.
Not binding a mobile phone to a location-specific code seems the sensible
thing to do, but it's probably too late to introduce this in the US.
Given this, I can understand why things are as they are.
I can still be annoyed by it though.
Phone companies spam me every day with their promotional broadcasting. I can't believe they're taking so long to use all that for something actually useful.
Cool! I've wondered a number of times why they don't already do this. SMS is suited for it from an architectual standpoint.
Now we can get SMSs saying "the trees are on fire!" just like we do for SNMP traps on our servers.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I assume you meant the broadcast channel / categories the phone is capable of receiving. The CMAS broadcast channels, also known as message identifiers, are relatively new. They do fall within the range of public warning system categories which have been around a while. Phones on the market in the US typically haven't needed to pick up broadcast signals since there was no one broadcasting on them. Phone manufacturers are working on their phones to pick up broadcast signals, and deal with the CMAS requirements. Over time as subscribers change out their phones to newer models and network operators add this capability more phones will be getting this new signal. Which broadcast categories you receive theoretically can be done independently of the network operator. They may want to program your phone in a way they prefer and you may or may not be able to change it, it will depend on the carrier and phone, etc. I suppose there is an opportunity for smart-phones to do something interesting with CMAS messages.
Because the number you are dialing is a mobile number. The US is unusual in that its cell numbers look like 'normal' numbers. Which is kinda weird if you think about it, since 'mobiles' are, well, mobile, and not tied to a particular area.
In most places, you can clearly distinguish a mobile number from other numbers. Either:
- Mobile numbers are shorter or longer than landlines; or
- Mobiles have their own area code. For instance in Australia, a number with the 04 'area code' is a mobile number and charged accordingly.