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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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
OMG! A toradno iz comin. proced 2 teh nearest evacushun sheltr
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.
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.