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California Works with Sprint on First Mobile Alert System
The California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) has selected Sprint to deploy the first Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) in the country. The FCC has established the CMAS to allow wireless service providers send emergency alerts as text messages to their subscribers.
The nation's first CMAS pilot program will be conducted in San Diego County beginning in fall 2010 in partnership with the San Diego County Office of Emergency Services. The technology will be tested across urban, suburban and rural areas, and includes the involvement of law enforcement agencies, local jurisdictions and other regional partners.
The CMAS network will allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to accept and aggregate alerts from the President of the United States, the National Weather Service (NWS), and state and local emergency operations centers, and then send the alerts over a secure interface to participating wireless providers. Emergency alerts will be classified in one of three categories:
- Presidential Alerts – Alerts for all Americans related to national emergencies, such as terrorist attacks, that will preempt any other pending alerts;
- Imminent Threat Alerts – Alerts with information on emergencies, such as hurricanes or tornadoes, where life or property is at risk, the event is likely to occur, and some responsive action should be taken; and
- Child Abduction Emergency/AMBER Alerts – Alerts related to missing or endangered children due to an abduction or runaway situation.
It will be possible for consumers to opt out of receiving Imminent Threat and Child Abduction/AMBER alerts, but not Presidential Alerts.
The CMAS technology in Sprint's network is enabled by Alcatel-Lucent's Broadcast Message Center (BMC), which serves as the secure interface between CMAS and Sprint's network to meet the mission critical needs of delivering emergency alert messages. BMC receives the CMAS alerts from state and federal agencies and broadcasts them to cell sites serving mobile customers within a targeted geographic area. ...
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FCC's Copps & Clyburn Reclassification of Broadband
Speaking at "The Future of the Internet" Public Hearing, Minneapolis, Minnesota, FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn stated their support for the principles of Net Neutrality. Both also back the position that the FCC should reclassify broadband as the telecommunications service, establishing its authority to enforce rules. The comments come in the wake of the recent Verizon-Google agreement on Internet governance, which the commissioners criticized for being a closed room deal between industry giants.
Copps: "Our job now is to correct course by reclassifying broadband as the telecommunications service that it is (you know: actually call an apple an apple) and then craft rules and procedures that will protect consumers against discrimination, protect against a privatized Internet, and protect against the cannibalization, cable-ization and further consolidation of broadband technology."
Clyburn: "Any proposal that favors the FCC being stripped of its rulemaking authority regarding consumer protection and non-discrimination requirements, and any proposal that would advocate that no agency will have authority over Internet access would be impossible for me to embrace and should leave us all wondering, if that should ever
happen, exactly who is going to protect Internet consumers?"
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U.S. Senators Raise Security Concerns about Huawei
A group of eight U.S. senators published a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper to raise their concern Huawei Technologies as a potential supplier to Sprint Nextel. Specifically, the senators claim that Huawei maintains close ties with China's military and poses a national security risk to the United States. The senators also cite Huawei's sales activity in Iran, intellectual property concerns, and financial support from the Chinese government.
The senators request a range of information from the Obama administration, including whether the U.S. Treasury Department has negotiated any possible arrangements by which Huawei could invest in or acquire control over a supplier involved with sensitive U.S. government projects? Whether the intelligence community has any cybersecurity concerns regarding Huawei? Whether Sprint-Nextel has any contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense or the intelligence community? Whether U.S.-based employees of Huawei have been granted security clearance for access to classified information?
The letter was signed by Senators Kyl, Bond, Shelby, Inhofe, Bunning, Sessions, Burr and Collins.
For its part, Huawei circulated a letter to the media in which it states that it is an employee-owned private company with no ownership stake by the Chinese government or the military. Huawei further asserts that it has a good intellectual property record and that it abides by the law in all of the territories in which it operates.
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won a grant valued at $19.5 million to connect unserved residents to affordable broadband services. The funding comes from the Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service (RUS) under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA). Subscribers covered by the grant would receive service from one of WildBlue's three current satellites - Anik-F2, WildBlue-1, and AMC-15 - and starting in mid 2011, from the new high-capacity ViaSat-1 satellite.
