FCC’s Steady March Towards Improved Wireless Emergency Alerts Continues

November 2017 - The idea to use the advanced GPS technology in many modern smartphones and wireless devices is not new. A 1998 FCC provision, named, Enhanced 911 Services, began requiring wireless providers to automatically patch through any emergency calls to their network, and mandated that emergency service personnel be able to receive the originating cell phone’s telephone number and the location of the cell site that handled that call. Since this provision however, progress in increasing the ability to accurately locate a mobile phone user in the context of an emergency has been slow.

 

One process that allows providers to determine a user’s place in space is called triangulation, wherein the wireless device (e.g. smartphone) sends additional signals to other carrier antennas in addition to the primary one, which allows three antennas to calculate the point of origin. This process has doubtlessly saved countless lives in allowing emergency personnel to respond to distress calls more quickly. The question remains however: If private companies like Uber and pizza delivery companies can use a phone’s GPS to accurately and quickly find the point of origin, can federal organizations use this technology to improve wireless emergency alerts? Admiral David Simpson, former chief of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau spoke to this issue by stating, “If you can hail a ride using that part of the phone or order a pizza, of course we should be able to use that for something as worthy as micro targeting alerts.” 

 

One challenge of using WEA is its current limitation on granular targeting of alerts, which according to one Harris County Official is why his local government did not use the system during Hurricane Harvey, "because it does not want to potentially alert the entire county when a WEA message may only pertain to a certain portion of the county.” As natural disasters increase in strength and frequency, consideration must be given to technologies’ potential to assist in emergency response, recovery, and relief efforts. According to Wired, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stated that the agency would begin implementation of Obama-era orders "calling for wireless carriers to pinpoint emergency alerts down to the cellular tower level.” Other proposed rules include provisions to require carriers to send alerts from multiple languages, and be able to support multimedia alerts. With the public need for enhanced wireless emergency alerts, the FCC would be well served to act swiftly. Source: Issie Lapowsky, Wired