[IP] Emergency Broadcasting via Cellular -- our lives held hostage?

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Bob Frankston [Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 5:37 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Emergency Broadcasting via Cellular -- our lives held hostage?

Mark Wood of http://cellcastcorp.com/ gave a talk at eComm2008 and at the homebrew mobile (cellular) group this week. Apparently the standard cellular base stations all have a broadcast capability that can alert all cell phones at once and thus scales by the number of towers not the number of phones.

This is already implemented by rarely turned on because the carriers don’t see a revenue case for turning it on even if it can save many lives. I won’t say that it would have saved everyone in the Asian Tsunami because there was also the problem of realizing there was a Tsunami but it would likely have saved many.

In the US it is apparently only turned on in Appleton Wisconsin (http://www.fcc.gov/pshs/docs/advisory/cmsaac/pdf/CellCastTechnologies.pdf).

‘nuf said. Well, IANAL so I could add depraved indifference?

-------------------------------------------