WASHINGTON-Three nationwide GSM carriers will participate in a digital emergency alert pilot that officially kicked off last week, but questions remain about whether the Bush administration-sponsored project can secure support from top CDMA wireless operators and the leading industry trade association.
The six-month pilot in the national capital area, coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security and the Association of Public Television Stations, is designed to improve public warnings in times of national crisis.
DHS and APTS said Cingular Wireless L.L.C., AT&T Wireless Services, and T-Mobile USA Inc. agreed to be involved in testing.
APTS said the pilot will demonstrate how public TV stations’ digital infrastructure, when used with the Public Broadcasting Service’s next-generation interconnection system, can play a role in the national delivery of a digitally based alert and warning system-and as a last-mile delivery system to radio and TV stations, personal computers, cell phones and other consumer wireless devices.
SpectraRep, a firm specializing in broadcast Internet Protocol solutions, will offer technology and management consulting services for the project.
“This technology will substantially improve Homeland Security’s ability to provide alert and warning accessibility to the hearing and sight impaired, targeted warning messages, and improved public reception by increasing the types of devices that can receive critical alert and all hazards warnings,” said Michael D. Brown, under secretary for emergency preparedness and response at the Department of Homeland Security.
The nation’s existing emergency alert system, largely limited to voluntary cooperation of TV and radio broadcasters, dates back to the Cold War. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States gave additional momentum to efforts to make the emergency alert system more modern by integrating new digital technologies-such as wireless and the Internet-into the mix.
Einstein PCS, owned by Airadigm Communications Inc., is moving forward to test cell broadcast technology to deliver emergency alerts to wireless subscribers in Appleton, Wis., in a similar trial.
Last month, Reynold Hoover, director of national security coordination at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told lawmakers at a House hearing that the pilot would lay the foundation for a national digital backbone capable of supporting emergency alerts across many technological platforms-including wireless-by the end of 2005.
At that time, Hoover told a House homeland security subcommittee that FEMA-a unit of DHS-was in talks with Verizon Wireless and other mobile-phone operators about being part of the digital emergency alert pilot.
Subsequent interviews with Hoover and others indicated some wireless carriers were not in serious discussions with homeland security officials about the emergency alert pilot and that Hoover may have overstated progress in securing the wireless industry’s buy-in to the initiative.
Indeed, by the time Hoover and APTS President John Lawson signed a cooperative agreement at a press event last Thursday, Verizon Wireless-the nation’s No. 1 wireless operator and a CDMA disciple-was not one of the wireless partners in the pilot. Neither was Sprint PCS, another national CDMA wireless carrier.
Lawson said Nextel Communications Inc., whose networks use proprietary iDEN technology, also will support the pilot. But press materials did not list Nextel as a wireless partner.
In a telephone interview with RCR Wireless News last month, Hoover said there were talks with the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association and he was hopeful of getting the trade group’s backing for the pilot. But CTIA spokesman John Walls said that while the organization supports government efforts to improve emergency warnings, CTIA has no present plans to endorse the pilot.
FEMA and APTS said the homeland security funding bill that President Bush recently signed into law includes report language directing the Department of Homeland Security to provide Congress by Jan. 31 a progress report on the emergency alert pilot. The report could provide the foundation for future funding, according to public TV and government officials.
