Risks from Alerts to Cellphones under Review

The risk that emergency alerts sent to cellphones could cause networks to crash as subscribers respond en masse is a key topic as the FCC Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee sets standards for warnings, officials said Mon. The committee met for a 2nd time at FCC hq for an update on emerging issues as it writes a final report (CD Dec 13 p3).

“If an operator submits a warning to a wireless device, one of the concerns we have is they're going to have that mobile device in their hand when they receive that alert,” Brian Daly with Cingular, leader of the body’s Communications Technology Group, said: “Immediately, we're concerned, they're going to turn around and use that device to either call or family and friends or try to get some more information about that alert.”

In crises, emergency responders’ ability to communicate and people’s ability to make 911 calls is especially critical, Daly said. “We are looking for ways to minimize the potential for wireless alerts resulting in severe network congestion that will inhibit critical communications,” he said. For the same reason point-to-point technologies wouldn’t work for broadcasting warnings, Daly said: “Point- to-point technologies would quickly congest the network resulting in message delays, messages not delivered, as well as the potential for denying voice service capabilities for those critical calls that need to get through.”

Wireless devices must be used only to deliver warnings about immediate and severe threat or likely threats to life, health and property, Daly said. “We want to minimize the 1cry wolf’ syndrome,” he said: “We don’t want to send too many alerts to the mobile devices because people will start ignoring them.”

Under the WARN Act that created the committee, carrier participation is voluntary. Among decisions so far is that messages to carriers should come from a single source, sending the warning to carriers who send it to subscribers. Messages are expected to follow a standard format based on the common alerting protocol (CAP), and to be broadcast so that they can be received by varied devices, including low- end cellphones.

Edward Salas of Verizon Wireless, leader of the Alerting Gateway Group, said carriers should be able to broadcast the message as it comes to them. “Carriers should not be required to modify or edit the alert message content,” Salas said: “We want carriers to do what they do best, which is to address distribution of messages as opposed to the treatment of the content.”