Cellphones Get Government Chips For Disaster Alert

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said the Commercial Mobile Alert System that Congress approved in 2006 will direct messages to cellphones in case of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other serious emergency. There will be at least three levels of messages, ranging from a critical national alert from the president to warnings about impending or occurring national disasters to alerts about missing or abducted children. The alert would show up on the phone's front screen, instead of the traditional text message inbox, and arrive with a distinct ring and probably a vibration. People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts."

Comments

Re:Disable it

[mtxmorph]

I don't know where the article gets this "chip" idea from -- that is completely bogus.

The system uses the standard cell broadcast system (CBS) as its backend, and most phones have supported that forever. It is basically an application which sits on top of CBS.

Re:Specificity

[cbunix23]

I wonder what level of geographical specificity is possible? Hopefully this will broadcast to selected towers instead of selected phone numbers.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by AT&T, VZW, Sprint, and others. I've been involved with this product since day one. Alert areas can be as small as one cell, or it can be the entire United States. Target areas can be based on geocodes (states, counties, some cities, FEMA regions, NWS regions, and some others), polygons, circles. How FEMA and NWS end up using it is an open question, but I get the impression most of the alerts they will generate will go out at the county level. Just like the "tornado sirens" now. This may get refined over time to smaller areas as they gain experience with the system.