Wireless
California’s government will do a pilot this year with Sprint Nextel of a system to send emergency warnings and alerts to mobile phones within range of particular cell towers, said Matthew Bettenhausen, secretary of the state’s Emergency Management Agency. The…
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idea is to reach out-of-town visitors and others on the move, he said Friday. “That technology is out there but has not been implemented,” Bettenhausen said at Carnegie Mellon University’s Disaster Management Initiative Workshop in Silicon Valley. Emergency-notification systems that use telecom remain oriented toward landlines, he said. For incoming calls, “we have spent a lot of money making 911 ubiquitous, and I don’t think we should change that,” Bettenhausen said. The system’s being able to accept text messages would offer benefits, especially to people with disabilities, he said. But texts may not reach dispatchers as quickly as voice calls.