Emergency Alert System on Wireless Phones Must Be Deployable, Carriers Warn

“This whole idea of emergency alerts has been around for a long time and there are a lot of people, lot of vendors who have a lot of very specific, very prescriptive solutions,” a wireless industry source said: “The carriers are pleased with what Congress passed because it makes the obligation really a voluntary obligation. Carriers will provide something and various interests will be covered. That means that nothing can be prescriptive in a way that just doesn’t make sense for carriers to deploy it.”

The key is flexibility, the source said: “If you get too prescriptive carriers won’t deploy it on this voluntary basis that Congress has established and nothing will have been accomplished… The FCC had some very simple solutions in mind. Why don’t you just send everybody a text message?… They kept finding out there wasn’t a single simple solution. These were very complex concerns because of all the different kinds of networks scenarios.”

The body’s Tues. meeting, mostly organizational, set up working groups led by a steering group to be chaired by Chmn. Martin. Members briefly described concerns.

Jay Pabley, dir. of enhanced date services with Sprint Nextel, said any emergency alert system must be practicable. “The goal of this group has to be a product that comes out that the carriers can with excitement endorse and roll out to consumers,” Chris McCabe, vp-regulatory affairs at CTIA, said: “If we do that we've succeeded.”

Art Prest of the Rural Cellular Assn. said small carriers face unique challenges with EAS. “Whatever solution we settle on must be affordable and feasible for rural wireless carriers so they're not forced to opt out,” he said: “My second concern is technology. Approximately half of RCA members use CDMA and the other half use GSM… We have to be technology agnostic and make sure that any solution we settle on for EAS works equally well across all air interfaces.”

William Wertz, representing the Mich. Assn. of Bcstrs., said he joined the committee to make sure radio keeps its role in providing free emergency alerts. “As good as it is, [EAS] is a system in need of fixing in terms of needing to update it, and that’s what I think we are all about here today,” he said. Other technologies can figure in alerts “but not at the expense of radio,” he said. Patrick Roberts of the Fla. Assn. of Bcstrs. agreed on radio’s role. “In a disaster, be it natural or any other type, free over the air radio is really the only thing that still works,” he said.

Marion Dunn-Tutor, dir. of the Miss. Div. of Aging and Adult Services, wishes better alerts had been available during Hurricane Katrina, she said: “We wish we had some sort of mobile service alert that we could have notified our seniors to take advantage of the opportunities afforded them to remove themselves form danger,” she said. Hilary Styron, dir. of the Emergency Preparedness Div. of the National Organization on Disability, wants emergency alerts broadcast with captions and incorporate the needs of the handicapped, she said. “We want to ensure that public warning can be properly integrated with emerging technologies and make sure that the mayor of N.Y. and other cities can use these systems effectively,” said Jonathan Werbell, who heads emergency alerts in NYC.

“The entire world is actually looking at this committee,” Anthony Rutkowski of VeriSign said: “It’s important on a global scale.”