With the market saying 'no' to Nokia's Ovi Store, what do you think can be done to change this?The US Department of Homeland Security has taken another step towards a new SMS emergency alert system that will warn citizens of domestic disasters from earthquakes to terror attacks.
The Department has announced it’s picked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to oversee the new system of emergency alerts and act as the aggregator for the scheme, in charge of verifying to operators that any alerts do really come from the government and can be delivered to their subscribers across the country.
Oddly, while FEMA notes while that the gateway system the emergency alerts will use hasn’t been designed or engineered yet, it says it has the “necessary authorities and technical solutions to assume the responsibility as the federal cellular Alert Aggregator”. After having confirmed they have the necessary technical skills, FEMA will now actually start looking at the technical issues surrounding the system, like how to guarantee the government’s text messages can jump the queue ahead of non-emergency traffic. I don’t know about you, but picking the technology first and then getting someone to oversee it seems a bit more of a sensible option.
What do people do during disasters? Turn to their mobiles, of course. The Federal Communications Commission has adopted a plan that will see mobile networks used to transmit alerts during disasters or emergencies.
The system, called the Commercial Mobile Alert Systems, will see texts sent to mobile users including, presidential alerts, imminent threat alerts and child abduction alerts and possibly in the future, video and audio messages. The system will also be set up to deliver the messages to the blind and deaf.
There are two questions here: during disasters, will the network hold up? Anyone who was in London during the 7/7 bombings will attest how impossible it was to use the network for calls, texts or anything else. So does that mean there will be a priority system set up to ensure these messages get through? And secondly, the system delivering presidential alerts. During a crisis, surely the last thing people want to see is a George Bush’s gurning mug on their mobiles?
