Wireless Industry Discusses Technical Issues on Emergency Alerts With FCC

Representatives of CTIA and member companies met with FCC Public Safety Bureau staff to discuss the progress toward standards on enhanced wireless emergency alerts, CTIA said. Among the topics was “technical feasibility of geo-targeting and, relatedly, geo-fencing, as well as whether software responsible for such processing would be an application or a pre-installed functionality, and how such software would be updated,” said an ex parte filing in docket 15-91. “Parties also discussed network congestion issues associated with mobile-software based geo-fencing.” Another topic was rules for informing subscribers on the alerts. Industry representatives “noted the delicate balance between providing potential customers with point-of-sale information relating to WEA, and avoiding customer fatigue by limiting such disclosures to the most essential information,” CTIA said. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, U.S. Cellular and Qualcomm were represented, the association said.