FCC gives national SMS alert system stamp of approval
By Donald Melanson 
posted Apr 10th 2008 3:13PM
posted Apr 10th 2008 3:13PM
As expected, the FCC today approved plans to roll out a nationwide SMS-based alert system, which is now all but certain to be adopted by all four national carries, and no doubt most regional carriers as well. As CNN reports, under the new plan, the FCC will appoint a federal agency tasked with creating the messages, which will in turn be passed on to participating carriers (which will have ten months to comply with the system once the agency is named). Those messages will be limited to one of three categories of emergencies, including disasters like a terrorist attack, ongoing threats like hurricanes or earthquakes, or child abductions or amber alerts. Also as we had heard before, individuals will be able to opt out of the system if they so desire, and carriers will be required to provide distinct vibration and audio alert options for people with disabilities.[Thanks, Ron]
This actually make me feel a lot better. As I don't watch Television, and I don't have a radio that isn't in my car, I have often worried that I might not be aware of emergency broadcasts. All of my information feeds are pull, not push. But emergency broadcast is the one thing I really need to push. This solves that problem. I hope they implement it properly.
Now you know they're gonna be "blowing up" your phone with phony terror threats as election day approaches.
Welcome to the Fascist States of America.
If they blow up my phone with so many alerts they better make the texts free. Because I only have so much per month. aka iphone sms plan.
Arm yourselves with knowledge, people. And when they make that a crime, there's always bullets.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives_faketerror.html
Nikola,
The Republicans had all the tools of government in their control before the 2006 elections. If what you obviously fear had come to pass, they'd still be in control. As you know, Democrats took control of the House and Senate in that year. And to think that after Bush's re-election in 2004 there was talk that the Republicans would reign forevermore. Ha!
It seems that America always rights itself eventually. Don't freak out too much when things look bad. But don't let down your guard either. If you lay off the slander and revolutionary talk of "arm yourselves...people", we'll be cool.
Told you so.
is that a new logo? looks like the F has a giant claw that's going to grab us and feed us to its babies in a nest high above
That's the same logo that's been on the back of pretty much everything that's electronic for as long as I can remember. It looks a lot different in black and white though; so much so that I had to double check with the bottom of my computer.
I just hope they do not charge us for these text messages. As of right now, I am pay-per-use, and it is costing me 20 cents to recieve a text message. A total rip off if you ask me (btw it is AT&T wireless if you are wondering). I do not want to pay and additional $5 a month for the ability to text 5 times through the month.
well, maybe you should actually sign a contract and stop being cheap "i dont want to be commited to a company for 2 years" then pay all the extra fees of prepaid and stfu
Well, if a tornado comes your way, 20 cents seems pretty cheap. Of course, I hope the whole system will be location-aware.
Just want to let you know, I am on a 2 year contract...I put up more than 120 dollars each bill...do you call that cheap?!? I am in the process of trying to make that bill smaller not larger. Why would I want to pay 1440 dollars a year for cell phone service?
I have a pay as you go plan the dollor a day when you make a voice call. I just find it more worth it for me since I don't use my phone that much (but sometimes I have a long conversation and thats why I have the dollor a day). Also I thought At&t was 15 cents per message (I should know since my girl friend when she calls me and I am not able to get to my phone , she texts me what could have been 10 cents(10 cents for listening to the message) is 15 cent this.
You guys pay for receiving? what the hell kind of nonsense is that.
I hope we'll be able to opt out of individual alerts rather than opting out of the service entirely. The chances of me spotting persons involved in an "Amber alert" are equivalent to my lottery odds. The same low odds also figure for a "terrorist attack", but I suppose I'd like to actually hear about it.
This is only a test. If this were "real" it'd be sure to cause George Orwell to be rolling in his grave.
Who cares about /you/? Multiply yourself by a few million and the odds go up.
..which is the whole point.
...and amber alerts are by far more productive than the lottery.
I'm not against the idea of helping people find their kids. But the frequency of amber alerts being issued is rather bothersome. Most of the time the search is resolved without the public's help, and in several cases I've witnessed false alarms (child was with a relative or something).
Maybe when I'm old and/or retired I wouldn't mind being woken at 3 AM by an Amber alert. Until then, there will be plenty of people who won't mind, or are too lazy to configure which alerts they receive (if this is possible).
My concern really boils down to how this will be implemented. Will there be a web interface to set preferences? Will it be run by the FCC, or by individual TelCo's? Will you have to send a text message to opt-in or out? I really like the idea of being able to get emergency alerts, I'm just afraid it will be an all-or-nothing system.
DIGG!!
http://digg.com/tech_news/FCC_gives_national_SMS_alert_system_stamp_of_approval
Whats SWITCHED? I've never been there before I saw the link at the top of the page.
SMS amber alerts are a GREAT idea...
and i love LOVE the new design and layout of Engadget!! much more modern... good job engadget!
Missing kids do not concern me as a matter of my life and death, as does say, an impending meteor strike... so let's keep that off my mobile, I really coundn't care less. yes, I'm an ass.
Hey, well I guess the saying "You are what you eat" couldn't be more true.
Ugh. No thanks. It's bad enough when my weather radio goes off at three in the morning over some custody dispute. I don't need my phone doing it. If I can opt out of "Amber alerts", I'm very interested in this. Otherwise I'm opting out of everything.
How long before someone hacks the system and sends an SMS to all cell phones in the US with:
"Pink!e pW0nT!!"
im in ur alurt sistim. spammin ur sell fones
"i herd u leik mudkipz?" FTW
That's a good point. This will be the first US system that can communicate with virtually all citizens at the same time, instantly. This seems likely to be one of the most tempting targets for hackers to show off. More troubling is the possibility of a hacker creating a mass panic situation.
I can just imagine a couple messages that could be sent by hackers:
"Bush: All your base are belong to us."
or..
"Resistance is futile, America."
or..
"There is a bomb here. RUN!"
Great, now we can get terrorized when we are away from the TV or radio. How approving that Sirius/XM merger? How about that?
I can easily see this being used as an advertising scheme:
"NATIONAL ALERT: Hurricane heading to your city. Brought to you by HeadOn, Apply Directly To the Forehead"
Sigh.
Warning! TERROR ALERT level elevated to ORANGE. Brought to you buy delicious Florida Orange Juice: Part of a Balanced Breakfast.
If the carriers charge for the texts, they can all go to hell. Well, they can probably go anyways. What's worse than hell?
They can all call into their customer service lines.
opt out for me...
Hey... another tax we get to pay for!! WOO HOOOO!!!
let's hope funds get used better than on the census PDA debacle!
While you are at it why don't you call up and opt out of 911, and the emergency broadcasting service. Oh and lets stop putting money into our roads and bridges, oh and radars at airports? Bah...air traffic control is for pansies.
Its called infrastructure enhancements dumbass. Let me guess. Republican...we don't need no stinking infrastructure....right?
We stopped putting money into roads and bridges ages ago.
voluntary systems like this are poping up on collge campuses all around the country which allow the students to "opt-in" to get instant info on shootings and what not. the same should apply to this. you shouldn't have to opt-out of something that definitely has the potential of being abused. and as far as it goes they'll probably add another line at the end of your montly statement that will go unnoticed by 99 percent of the population stating the $.99 emergency broadcast fee.
Screw terror threats. I'd be more interested in having this broadcast from cellular towers that have a tornado within proximity to them or are in the path of a tornado. Send a picture of the path of a tornado to your cell along with ETA's as to when it will hit each city along the way. The number of lives this could save.....
Screw that. People don't know how to build homes in tornado alley. If enough tornadoes hit them, maybe they'll learn. If not, they are "gone with the wind" and I'm fine with that.
BOOOOO... FAKE... UR GAY!!!
loser... go spam elsewhere...
I think this is a wonderful idea and long overdue. Especially in cases like tornados where people could be sleeping while a tornado alert is out. I know in my case, I always have my cell phone on and next to my bed when I'm sleeping...there is no way I will hear a TV or radio alert, so this is the next best thing.
let's hope that FEMA's not in charge of it!
Can;t wait till this mother gets hacked... stupid fools.
Jesus Christ this pisses me off. I'm opting out of all text messaging now. I don't need freaking lame ass warnings from the guvamint, I have zero interest in paying for them, and when did it become so damned acceptable to intrude on MY LIFE without MY APPROVAL.
The current warning system we have where I live (cable and dish broadcasts interrupted if a chemical leak) either don't show up until well after the fact, don't show up at all, or are simple tests (like the Emergency Broadcast System).
The guvamint needs to spend more time governing and less time wasting taxpayer resources with dippy ideas like this.
/rant off
We have something similar to this set up at my college. We had a gun threat (turned out to be nothing but anyway) it took almost an hour after the message was sent before most messages were received on cell phones. There are 12,000 students at my school (university of northern iowa) and we had to sign up to be on this so I am guessing 5,000 messages were sent out. If we have 50 million messages sent out, how long is it going to take, and how much will it slow things down? I am in favor of this, but if it takes too long to get the messages out then it defeats the purpose
I had a high school that went through about a few hundred bomb threats each year. How many times did they warn students or evacuate anyone? 0!!! This was way before 9/11, so I guess Bush/Cheney weren't very original about ignoring intelligence reports on plane hijackings by Osama within US borders with the intent to hit buildings.
B"Should we warn anyone?"
C"Nah. Let's encourage airports to lower their security, instead."
B"We could also warn people when there is no threat."
C"That's so stupid, it just might work."
OMG TRNDO!
Great, I'm guessing I will also be billed for each of these emergency SMS messages at the standard rate of, what, .05 a message? Just another way to nickel and dime us I'm sure.
And yes there are still some of us who don't want or need a 5,000 text message plan for $4.99.....
yes i agree, the GUVAMINT should sort themselves out lol
get a life
This is a great idea as long as its free and they dont use it to advertise... if its going to save lives then its a no brainer
Poor reporting and ignorant comments.
Has no-one here heard of cell broadcast. This has been discussed by the FCC for at least 8 years that I know of.
It can be turned on on a users handset using OTA. A user
can easily turn it off.
And no you don't pay for incomming cell broadcasts
any more that you pay for listening to FM radio.
Screw a txt alert of my imminent death. Let it sneak up on ya like a man should.
Wasn't there a big stir in December about how so many people send SMS messages at midnight on New Year's Eve/Day that it clogs the phone tubes up and message delivery gets delayed, sometimes by several hours? How would sending messages to millions of phones simultaneously work again?
I totally dig the opt out, but I wonder if you will be able to pick what you're opting out of. For example, I'd love to know that there's a tornado coming for me, but would just as soon see the amber alert/fake terrorist attack alerts pass me by.
What took so long?
How the hell is this supposed to work? SMS works by using the empty time slots in the wireless network. When you send out, say, ten thousand SMSes at once, or even nicely queued, even if no one happens to be using their cell phones in the area at that time, there are only so many time slots, and SMSes by design are never guaranteed to be delivered, especially not to a deadline.
I'm thinking they must've thought about this but I just don't understand how it could work for anything but notices that are okay if they are delivered two days after being sent.
Okay, reading TFA it seems they're actually planning to redesign the SMS protocol to support broadcasts, updating base stations and cell phones in the process. WTFish, but sure, that could work.
There is already a system in place for GSM phones to do just that. It's called broadcast messages (similar to the notification you get for voicemail). If they do use that system it's solve a bunch of problems.
1. It'll have to be opt-in (for people who already own phones)
2. The Broadcast messages come directly from towers and are directed to anybody in the vicinity.
That'd make it regional by design, and it since it isn't a directed message (to the individual) it'll decrease network load.
I know they use it for troubleshooting and internal purposes, but there's nothing to keep them from using it for this alert system.
Forgot to add but At&t already sends me amber alerts by sms fyi when then do send them they don't cost me a cent.
I want the "gubment" to send the messages as shorthand txt like: "ALRT ALRT AL-KAED-DA IZ COMMIN 4 U" TTYL.
I'm all for it, as long as: 1) I don't have to lift a effin' finger to get them, 2) I don't have do anything more than log into my account on my provider's Web site and uncheck a box to opt out, and 3) getting any number of them is absolutely, positively FREE, always.
I don't want Amber Alerts. I'm not going to die if I don't get an Amber Alert.
Nuclear launch, meteor impact, gigantic tornado thing... sure.
Here's how you can tell there is a real disaster: The phone network is down.
Unless I missed it, no one is talking about the passive consent structure: you have to OPT OUT in order to avoid the propaganda, rather than OPT IN. BS. Looking forward to the "Repression 2.0" SMS messages from the Feds: "Stay inside your homes. Everything is under control."