Page 1 2 Page 1 2| FRIDAY - JULY 14, 2006 - ISSUE NO. 220 |
Dear friends of Wireless Messaging, Lauttamus Communications was presented a service award by Joe Manchin, Governor of West Virginia this week in Charleston. The Governor's Service Award is the premier award for volunteerism and service in West Virginia. Paul Lauttamus accepted the award from Governor Manchin with his proud father Al Lauttamus in attendance. Al and Paul Lauttamus have provided the encouragement, creative problem-solving, and professional expertise that make the WV211 statewide information and referral service a national model. Congratulations! News from Commtech Wireless:
More interesting news this week is about upgrading our antiquated national Emergency Alert System. "The failure to overhaul the half century-old emergency alert system in the aftermath the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has become a political embarrassment for the Bush administration and Congress." [source] The new Digital EAS was demonstrated on Wednesday in Arlington, Virginia. This mass broadcast of alerts is a big improvement of the old method of delivery. Messages are have previously been sent by relay from one broadcast station to another, a chain that can be disrupted if a location is out of service. So far, they only addressing the distribution of the messages to the broadcast points, not the critical "last mile" wireless connection that is of great interest to us. There is considerable discussion about sending text messages to cell phones, computers, PDAs, and other wireless devices—but no mention of Pagers. I am frequently asked how delivering EAS messages to our paging systems will help our business. Everything has an associated cost that must be paid, and profit is not a vulgar word. I am absolutely sure that the financial side of this can and will be worked out to everyone's satisfaction. The major benefit, in my view, will be simply to combat this unfortunate perception that paging technology is obsolete. We are already starting to see some shift in public opinion, that paging makes more sense than cell phones for many applications. If we can overcome this negative image, we will do more to help our industry than anything else. The AAPC and EMMA are both working hard on these issues. Please read the new EMMA whitepaper Radiopaging for Alerting First Responders and Informing the Public during Emergencies. Now on to more news and views. |
A new issue of The Wireless Messaging Newsletter gets posted on the web each week. A notification goes out by e-mail to subscribers on most Fridays around noon central US time. The notification message has a link to the actual newsletter on the Internet. That way it doesn't fill up your incoming e-mail account. There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world's major Paging and Wireless Data companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers—so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology. I regularly get reader's comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Data communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my web site. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it. NOTE: This newsletter is best viewed at screen resolutions of 800x600 (good) or 1024x768 (better). Any current revision of web browser should work fine. Please notify me of any problems with viewing. This site is compliant with XHTML 1.0 transitional coding for easy access from wireless devices. (XML 1.0/ISO 8859-1.) MORE PAGES | |||||||||||
Wireless emergency alert system moving forward, but questions linger
By Jeffrey Silva
July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON—The Association of Public Television Stations and the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency said they completed the second phase of a pilot program to design a national digital platform to distribute emergency alerts to cell phones, personal computers and other devices.
“This project demonstrates how the capabilities of America’s public broadcasters can be utilized to dramatically enhance the ability of the President of the United States to communicate with the American public during a national crisis,” said John Lawson, president of APTS.
APTS said DHS-FEMA have committed $5 million by the end of next year to deploy the digital emergency system to 356 public TV stations.
“The current EAS has it roots in the Cold War, and still relies on technology from that era. You had to be watching one of the major networks or listening to a radio station to have a chance of receiving the alert. What we are announcing today is an alert system for the mobile, networked and digital America of the 21st Century,” said Lawson.
However, the selection of a technology to disseminate mass wireless warnings remains unclear.
Last Wednesday’s demonstration at public TV station WETA in Arlington, Va. largely focused on the capability of the digital emergency alert system platform, not the last-mile delivery of emergency messages.
The failure to overhaul the half century-old emergency alert system in the aftermath the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has become a political embarrassment for the Bush administration and Congress. President Bush recently signed an executive order shifting some emergency alert service powers to DHS.
The Federal Communications Commission, which has yet to rule on an emergency alert reform proposal from 2004, is responsible for writing emergency warning regulations and enforcing them as they relate to television, radio and cable TV operators. There has been speculation the FCC could vote on emergency alert reform at its Aug. 3 meeting.
The House and Senate have bills pending to modernize the emergency alert system to take advantage of wireless and other popular communications technologies.
While DHS has not officially endorsed a technology for emergency wireless alerts, the agency appears to be leaning toward a cell broadcast approach embraced by Holland, South Korea and others, but largely shunned to date by the U.S. mobile phone industry.
Source: RCR Wireless News
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| WIRELESS MESSAGING NEWS |
'Smart Mob' Sounds Silly, But Could Be Key in Crisis
By Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry
The term "smart mob" sounds hopelessly geeky and saccharine, like a title for one of those late '90s books on reaching your Web potential, or managing in Internet time. We'd like to dismiss it as a silly idea. Except smart mobs — and we really couldn't think of a better name — are starting to have an impact on the way people stage protests, evade the law, and even meet up for drinks. And down the road, they could save lives in a crisis.
Best as we can explain it, a smart mob comprises people with text-messaging devices who connect both online and in the real world, and coordinate their actions. Put playfully by Mindjack.com, smart mobs are the "Slashdot effect applied to the meatspace zeitgeist." Smart Mobs author and popularizer Howard Rheingold describes smart mobs as "texting tribes," where "bursts of terse communications link people in real time and physical space."
This kind of intelligent mobbing has happened mostly in regions that have high wireless usage rates and easy relationships with technology -- Scandinavia and the Pacific Rim, for instance. These are places where people are generally shocked and concerned if you have no mobile phone. (We'd imagine a Singaporean without short message service, or SMS, is akin to an American without cable TV.)
These mobs take many forms. In the Philippines two years ago, text messaging helped mobilize rallies that ousted President Joseph Estrada. Singapore recently felt obligated to remind citizens that protests, even loosely organized, smart-mobbed protests, were illegal. In his book, Mr. Rheingold mentions fare-beaters in Sweden who send each other alerts on where attendants are on duty, as well as a virtual motorcycle gang in Japan that met up in the real world to torture a wayward member. Earlier this month, a thrashing of India's cricket team by Australia incited an SMS-driven boycott.
Despite hopes that flashy services will encourage Americans to get on the text-messaging bandwagon, the SMS culture hasn't caught on here yet. But if it does, it could help tackle a problem that has the government vexed: how to disseminate helpful information during a crisis. The government unveiled its Ready.gov site last week, which included some helpful tips but also some seemingly Cold War-era notions, such as (and we're guessing this is what they meant) if a nuclear weapon is detonated on your right, start running left. There's also the problem that even if you follow Ready.gov's advice and stockpile water, food, a long-sleeve shirt, moist towelettes, matches, a compass, signal flares, and so on, there's a good chance you won't be at home during an attack. You might be at work, in your car, on the subway.
This is the kind of situation in which a smart mob might come to the rescue. As Tech Central Station noted last week, it was wirelessly connected people that helped prevent further destruction on Sept. 11, 2001:
The only effective action to avoid further carnage came not from the Air Force jets that were scrambled, but from the passengers on Flight 93 whose relatives called on their cellphones to describe what had already happened.
The piece further notes that when cellphone circuits became jammed that day in New York, certain hand-held gadgets sending small packets of information — Blackberrys, for instance — were able to get messages through.
If a new terrorist attack comes — or a major blizzard or hurricane, for that matter — many people may not have access to television, the Web or radio, and in any case the information may be overly broad or unhelpful. But friends on Interstate 80 reporting via SMS that a bridge is still open because they just drove over it, or that a relative is safe because they just saw her, or that it's safe to go home because they're plopped on their couch watching "Alias"— this is helpful, trusted information.
We jokingly suggested back in August that the country doesn't need America's Most Wanted to catch criminals when it has spam. This applies even better to smart mobs: With cellphone-location services in the works (which we grant have Big Brother-ish questions we won't address here) tailored alerts could be sent to users in a certain area during a crisis. London already has a service that will alert subscribers to any nearby attacks, based on their home and work postal codes. Combining the official word with messages from friends on the street would be potent in a crisis.
Source: "Real Time" column in the online Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2003
U.S. to Update Alert System for Disasters
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON, July 12 — The people who brought the nation the ominous announcement, “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System,” are working on an alert system for disasters that could ultimately send messages simultaneously to millions of cellphones nationwide.
The first steps to building the system, called the Digital Emergency Alert System, were displayed on Wednesday in a television studio near Washington, where federal officials used a Public Broadcasting Service network to transmit a message by satellite to a television set and a satellite radio receiver.
The current system only allows the federal government to broadcast verbal messages nationwide or to a large region directly. The new one should be able to send distinct messages automatically that include video, audio, documents and graphics to specific urban areas or to emergency personnel automatically, officials said.
Currently, 24 PBS affiliates have the equipment to receive and transmit the digital signal. By the end of 2007, all PBS affiliates should receive and transmit the signal, said Kevin G. Briggs, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official.
Special receivers will be provided by the end of next year to most radio and television stations in large cities and to state emergency operations centers so they can automatically tap in to rebroadcast the special digital messages, which will be initiated by the federal government and distributed by PBS members.
The new emergency signal can already be sent by satellite to cellphone companies. But trying to transmit simultaneously the information as a text message to every subscriber would probably overload the system, Mr. Briggs said, so federal officials are exploring technological solutions, meaning that this option may not be available for some time.
The new alert system is expected to cost about $5.5 million to test and deploy nationally and $1 million annually to maintain, FEMA said.
The upgrade in the alert system, which was created during the cold war, was inspired partly by the 2001 terror attacks and partly by Hurricane Katrina, when communications problems hampered government response and notification efforts.
John Lawson, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, said a benefit of the new system was that the digital broadcasts could be reliably sent out even if Internet or wired phone systems were knocked out or partly disabled.
It also avoids a major weakness in the current system. Messages are now sent by relay from one broadcast station to another, a chain that can be disrupted if a location is out of service.
Source: The New York Times
FCC Sets Comment Cycle For USF Contribution NPRM BloostonLaw Telecom Update The FCC has established a comment cycle for the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) accompanying its recent Report & Order that amends the existing approach for assessing contributions to the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) by raising the interim wireless safe harbor to 37.1% and by establishing universal service contribution obligations for providers of interconnected voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. The Commission issued this NPRM to determine what additional steps, if any, it should take to ensure the sufficiency and stability of the USF. Comments in this new WC Docket No. 06-122 proceeding are due August 9, and replies are due September 8. In the NPRM, the FCC seeks comment on whether to eliminate or raise the interim wireless safe harbor of 37.1%, based on the increased volume of long distance calls placed via wireless phones. (NOTE: The interim safe harbors for paging and SMR dispatch will remain at 12% and 1%, respectively.) Wireless providers may base contributions on actual interstate and international revenues or on traffic studies conducted to approximate these revenues. In light of these options, the Commission seeks comment on whether it should eliminate the interim wireless safe harbor or whether there remains a need to perpetuate a wireless safe harbor. The Commission likewise seeks comment on whether mobile wireless providers can, or should be able to determine their actual interstate and international end-user revenues. If the FCC decides to eliminate the wireless safe harbor, how would mobile wireless providers determine their actual usage, and should the FCC continue to permit wireless providers to use traffic studies? For example, the study relied on in the Order utilized originating and terminating Numbering Plan Areas (NPAs), or area codes, to identify interstate revenues. The FCC seeks comment on whether originating and terminating NPAs reflect whether a call is interstate or international. The FCC also seeks comment on whether originating and terminating cell sites could be used to determine the jurisdictional nature of a call. Are there other methods of determining jurisdiction? The FCC asks commenters to address associated difficulties and costs of implementation. The FCC also seeks comment on whether there are unique difficulties associated with analyzing either outgoing or incoming calls, and whether it is necessary to analyze both types of calls or would, for example, outbound calls reasonably approximate all interstate and international usage. If the Commission decides to retain a wireless safe harbor, it seeks comment on whether a safe harbor of 37.1% for interstate and international end-user revenue is appropriate, or whether the safe harbor should be raised. Given that mobile wireless providers retain the option of reporting their actual interstate end-user telecommunications revenues, we have found that setting the interim safe harbor at the high end of the market for interstate and international end-user revenue is a reasonable approach. If 37.1% does not reflect the high end of the market, what percentage does? Since 1998, the FCC has increased the interim wireless safe harbor twice. It seeks comment on how to determine the safe harbor percentage to better reflect market conditions on an ongoing basis. For example, should it periodically (e.g., annually, quarterly) adjust the interim safe harbor percentage to reflect wireless interstate end-user revenue trends? If so, how would it establish these trends? Second, it seeks comment on the USF safe harbor obligations it has established in this Order for interconnected VoIP providers (e.g., 64.9%). It encourages commenters to describe possible ways in which the new requirements for interconnected VoIP providers could be improved. The FCC says it welcomes suggestions for a permanent approach to USF contributions from interconnected VoIP providers. In particular, the Commission seeks comment on whether to eliminate or change the interim safe harbor for providers of interconnected VoIP service. The Commission asks commenters to address whether a safe harbor continues to be appropriate for providers of interconnected VoIP service. Can providers of interconnected VoIP service identify the amount of actual interstate and international, as opposed to intrastate, telecommunications they provide? If so, should the Commission require that these providers report based on actual data? If not, is 64.9% the most appropriate level, or should the FCC adjust the interim interconnected VoIP safe harbor? The Commission asks that commenters advocating a change to the safe harbor explain the basis of their proposed revised safe harbor and how the safe harbor should be calculated. BloostonLaw contacts: Hal Mordkofsky, Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, John Prendergast, and Mary Sisak. COMMENT DATES SET FOR NPRM ON KATRINA PANEL RECOMMENDATIONS: FBI DRAFTS MEASURE TO EXPAND CALEA: |
Source: Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy and Prendergast, LLP
For additional information, contact Hal Mordkofsky at (202) 828-5520 or halmor@bloostonlaw.com
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The Association of Public Television Stations and DHS Put Digital Emergency Alert and Warning System to the Test
Pilot Project Will Use Public Television's Digital Infrastructure to Enhance the Delivery System for Presidential Alerts and Warnings
WASHINGTON, July 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) today tested Phase Two of its Digital Emergency Alert System (DEAS). This project demonstrates how the Department of Homeland Security can improve and disseminate public alerts and warnings during times of national crisis through the use of local public television's digital television broadcasts.
John Lawson, president and CEO of the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) said, "This project demonstrates how the capabilities of America's public broadcasters can be utilized to dramatically enhance the ability of the President of the United States to communicate with the American public during a national crisis."
"The partnership between APTS and the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA is a major step forward in laying the foundation for a new generation alert and warning system," said Lawson. "The current EAS has it roots in the Cold War, and still relies on technology from that era. You had to be watching one of the major networks or listening to a radio station to have a chance of receiving the alert. What we are announcing today is an alert system for the mobile, networked, and digital America of the 21st Century."
"Digital capabilities will improve the reliability, flexibility and security of the emergency alert system," said David Paulison, Director of FEMA. "This more efficient system will better serve first responders and government officials, as well as provide the American public timely information so they can safeguard themselves and loved ones in times of emergencies."
APTS demonstrated the capabilities of digital broadcasting through a two- year project in the National Capital Region. The initial phases of this project included PBS, WETA, twenty-five other public television stations across the country, the FCC and NOAA. APTS and FEMA were also joined by partners in the commercial television, cable, cellular, paging and radio industries. SpectraRep, a professional services firm, provides technology and management consulting services to the television stations. Lawson continued, "Public television is dedicated to public service.
Our stations and the communities that support them, as well as state legislatures, foundations and the federal government, have raised over one billion for digital conversion. Our stations are using the powerful digital technology to bring new services to those they serve, including HDTV, new standard definition channels and rich media content delivered directly to PC's. Today, we take a major step forward in using this same digital infrastructure to enhance public safety. The public will be safer because of this project."
Lawson concluded, "Public service is in the DNA of public television. Digital television is allowing us to roll out a new generation of content and services for the American people. We've always been about enhancing lives. Now we can help save lives as well."
About DHS-FEMA
On March 1, 2003, FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration.
About APTS
The Association of Public Television Stations is a nonprofit membership organization established in 1980 to support the continued growth and development of a strong and financially sound noncommercial television service for the American public. APTS provides advocacy for public television interests at the national level, as well as consistent leadership and information in marshaling support for its members: the nation's public television stations.
Source: PRNewswire.com
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