WASHINGTON-The wireless industry told the Federal Communications Commission that integrating wireless technology into the nation’s outdated Emergency Alert System could be more difficult than expected and warned policy-makers that scrapping the current regime would be unwise.
CTIA-The Wireless Association said policy-makers should proceed cautiously as they try to improve the EAS, which has been subject to intense scrutiny in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, national security was a key consideration for voters in last week’s presidential election, which returned President Bush to the White House for a second term.
“Wireless systems currently are designed to facilitate point-to-point communications, not point-to-multipoint broadcasts. The networks and technologies are different than those used by existing EAS service providers and, as a result, fitting wireless into the existing EAS may prove difficult without substantial alternations to the existing structure,” said CTIA.
The FCC is looking at various options-including using wireless and other digital technologies-to modernize a Cold War-era emergency warning system that currently largely depends on voluntary efforts of TV and radio broadcasters.
CTIA said the current system should not be overhauled but rather revitalized and improved. “Expanding beyond the existing broadcast service should be done cautiously, if at all, as it would raise technical, operational and policy questions,” CTIA stated.
That the wireless industry would be leery about EAS reform is not surprising. The FCC rulemaking could materialize into just one more unfunded mandate for wireless carriers already forced to pick up the tab for local number portability, location-based 911, digital wiretaps, hearing-aid compatibility and other federal regulations. Moreover, wireless operators are facing costly network upgrades necessary to deploy third-generation wireless services in coming years. All this in a recovering wireless market that remains competitive even after Cingular Wireless L.L.C.’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc.
But it is unclear, if not unlikely, that the Bush administration and Congress will settle for mere cosmetic changes-or even modest adjustments-to the EAS. At a House homeland security subcommittee hearing in September, some lawmakers criticized Department of Homeland Security official Reynold Hoover for not having made more progress on EAS three years after the terrorist strikes.
DHS recently launched a six-month pilot that will experiment with different distribution channels and technologies-including wireless-to better facilitate emergency warnings to a mobile citizenry. Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile USA Inc. and Nextel Communications Inc. intend to participate in the project.
In Wisconsin, Einstein PCS-a GSM carrier owned by Aradigm Networks-has ruffled feathers in industry by testing cell broadcast technology in advance of a full-scale rollout sometime next year.
While there is strong support to bring the emergency warning system into the 21st century, making it happen is not easy or straightforward. Such an undertaking is complex and controversial due to the many stakeholders-commercial, public safety, local, state and federal government and others-involved. Moreover, there are legal, technological, administrative and funding questions that defy easy answers.
CTIA said cell broadcast and short message service are possible candidates for wireless delivery of emergency messages, but each has shortcomings. The trade group said SMS has technical limitations and deployment of GSM cell broadcast “would take a significant amount of additional time, cost, effort and development.” CTIA said cell broadcast deployment would be even more difficult for CDMA and iDEN platforms.
Peter Ward, lead author of a 2000 White House report that advocated leveraging digital technologies such as wireless to improve EAS, does not see technological and funding challenges as insurmountable.
“Warning information requires a very small number of bits and bytes of digital bandwidth and thus can be easily multiplexed into any digital communications channel without significantly affecting the main use of that channel,” said Ward.
