California State officials said today that they expect to provide a cell phone alert system within the next 12 to 14 months. They are working along side the federal government but are prepared to move forward without them.

“With Bay Area officials leading the way, warnings about threats ranging from campus massacres, road calamities, wildfires and quake aftermaths to terrorist attacks, floods and tsunamis will come over the cell phone.

With utility regulators’ backing and no legislation required, authorities are planning to use cell-phone towers to broadcast tone and text warnings of imminent dangers to all cell phones and Blackberry-type devices in a specific zone. For example, the phone would emit a sound unlike the usual ring followed by a written message appearing on the screen.

Officials said the alert system would not invade citizens’ privacy, since it would be a mass message sent out to all those phones that had been served by a particular communications relay tower near a danger zone, without regard to who owns the phones.”

Source: Inside The Bay Area

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am and is filed under SMS/TXT/MMS, Emergency Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.