Oklahoma Disaster Shows Importance of Alerts to Mobile Phones, Say CTIA Speakers

"We've seen how wireless communications has really been critical to first responders, to warnings and the sending of alerts,” Josef said. “At the same time, there has been a rising public expectation of wireless communications and the services that we provide. … The more agencies that we have participating, as long as the alerts are sent judiciously, that’s certainly a key public service."

"When you look at the technology that’s on display here at this show, it indicates how far we have come in an enormously short period of time,” said Brandt Hershman, a Republican who serves as majority leader of the Indiana Senate. Hershman related how four years ago he got a call from a local emergency manager who was very excited the area was getting its first tornado warning sirens. “My response to her was, ’somehow I feel in today’s technology-based age a siren on a stick probably does not provide as much information as you might look to from your elected officials,'” he said. A siren tells a person to look out the window but “it conveys no real information,” he said.

Sprint Nextel Vice President Charles McKee said people complain if they get too many emergency alerts sent to their phones. “We'll get complaints from our customers saying, ‘Will you turn these things off, because every time my phone goes off it makes this horrific sound,'” he said.

Emergency alerts to cellphones are “static” and “regimented” at this point, controlled by the government, said Holly Henderson, external affairs manager at SouthernLINC Wireless. “I see the potential for industry to step in,” she said. “There’s an app for everything. For these types of alerts maybe there are apps that can better, more quickly provide information and do it in a way that doesn’t annoy people. … I think that speaks to that light regulatory touch aspect of setting minimum standards and then letting industry innovate so that government policy doesn’t act as a shackle on industry.”

"No doubt, wireless emergency alerts are very important. I think we're just finding our way,” said Jeff Cohen, chief counsel at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials. Cohen said the move to next-generation 911 will help. He agreed apps may play a role in future emergency communications.

Panelists also said a move to allowing texting to 911 is critical as communications evolves, but many issues remain unresolved. “Texting has become a major form of communications,” McKee said. “The first thing that we've emphasized … everyone here needs to understand, text-to-911 is a best efforts service,” he said. “It is not a guaranteed process. … You're effectively retrofitting and drafting on to this technology 911 capability."

The network that has been built to process 911 voice calls is enormous and sophisticated, McKee said. “By the time you're talking to the call takers, the network is figuring out where you are and then sending that information through special channels that we have designed to interface with the” public safety answering point, he said. “None of that happens in texting,” he said. “This phone doesn’t know you're dialing 911. It’s just a text so we have to retrofit everything. We have to go back after the fact, figure out what tower did that text come from, then figure out what PSAP to send it to.”

There are numerous text-to-911 trials already under way, Cohen noted. “The 911 call takers have to get used to this environment where they may be responding to multiple texts at the same time, to abbreviations, and then they're not going to have what they're used [to], which is hearing background noises and discerning things."

Henderson said the FCC is focused on an interim requirement for carriers to transmit text messages to 911. “Our energy is focused on understanding what vendors can offer us, what it’s going to cost, what it’s going to take on our end,” she said. “We aren’t focused as much on sort of the bigger picture of how do we get to next-generation 911.”

Hershman said Indiana looked at how many PSAPs the state had. “Most of our counties had two, three, four,” he said. “One of them had 18, and one of those 18 served a four-square-block area. The political will to change that, it was an enormous exercise trying to change that structure because it was somebody’s job, it was somebody’s little fiefdom."

Regulators need to come to a recognition that “it’s IP, stupid,” said Phil Montgomery, chairman of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. “What we call a phone system is no longer that, it’s an Internet Protocol system that’s capable of so many things.” The question is, where should carriers be required to spend their money, Montgomery said. “You don’t want to be spending on interim steps. You don’t want to be spending on legacy systems. Where you want to be investing is the long term."

A second CTIA panel Tuesday also had a strong deregulatory bent. Bruce Starr, a state senator from Oregon and president-elect of the National Conference of State Legislatures, said wireless benefits from a level playing field. “NCSL recognizes that deregulation and competition are among the means to reach the goals of advanced infrastructure development, Universal Service, expanded consumer choice,” said Starr, a Republican. “State legislators and state regulators have been on the forefront of deregulation of the telecommunications industry."

Wireless service is more ubiquitous than anyone would have thought 15 or 20 years ago, Starr said. “In my household, with just five people living under the roof, we have seven phones from three different providers,” he said. “There are some areas that maybe only have one provider, maybe only have two providers and maybe that’s all they're ever going to have.”

"My general belief as a regulator is that our role and responsibility is to scratch your itches,” Paul Kjellander, president of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission, told the industry audience. “If we don’t know what the problem is, we probably shouldn’t be engaged in trying to fix it.” Sometimes regulators try to be “proactive” and get ahead of problems, he said. “Typically, whenever that happens, we muck it up."

Regulators need to focus on a few key questions, Kjellander said. “What’s in the best interest of consumers and what’s in the best interest of true competition?” he asked. “Then, really, what do we mean by ubiquitous coverage and universal service and can we really afford it? Those are the issues we really have to ask ourselves.” Some people choose to live in places that are impossible to serve because of the costs, he said. “I prefer to let the market work and not get in the way."

Universal service should be a goal of regulators, regardless of where someone lives, countered Orjiakor Isiogu, a member of the Michigan Public Service Commission. “How can we find creative ways to make sure that everybody has access to basic infrastructure, access to 911?” he asked. “It’s a matter of life and death.”