Cell broadcast fills notification need

04.20.2007
The Oklahoman
by Jim Staf, Business Writer

For the next weather-related crisis or terrorist threat, emergency managers might use what has been a virtually unknown cell phone technology to instantaneously warn thousands of people.

"Right inside your and my cell phone — it was pretty secret for quite a while — is a broadcast capability, a truly broadcast function,” said Paul Klein, chief operating officer at CellCast Technologies.

When activated, the technology allows emergency managers to send targeted text messages to as few people or as many as needed in a specific geographic area.

It can't be spoofed or hacked, Klein said.

But it can reach thousands within seconds.

"When you have a lot of (text) messages going out, there are two problems,” he said.

"One is, I don't know where everybody is.

"Second, there is a critical point between 5,000 and 10,000 (total messages) that knocks immediacy out of text messaging.”

No such physical limitations with the cell broadcasts developed by CellCast's Mark Wood and Kevin Preston. The technology has been adopted in several European countries and CellCast Technologies is working to sell it to emergency managers in U.S. cities and counties.

"We're sending a message that gets converted right now to text,” Klein said of the technology. "In the next generation of phones it will be pictures and maps. We allow the emergency manager to pick the area and message.”

The technology shows promise for emergency use, said Randy Nason, a security consultant and vice president at Oklahoma City-based C. H. Guernsey and Co.

Guernsey is an architectural, engineering and consulting firm.

The current standard is e-mail or traditional text messages, which face time and physical constraints, Nason said.

"You don't have the time to waste when you want the information to get out as quickly as it can,” he said. "Cell broadcasting, because of the technology and frequency that is used, whatever information you want to disseminate to your audience, there is a high reliability that the information will get to them quickly.”

Cell broadcasts need to be "in our tool kits for situations like we saw at Virginia Tech,” he said.

In the case of the mass murders this week at Virginia Tech University, which has a student population of about 26,000, the technology could have allowed emergency managers to reach students and faculty with no time lag, CellCast's Klein said.

"This technology could have reached people in the area, and that's the value of it,” he said.

Most likely, emergency managers in Virginia were unaware the cell broadcast technology exists, he said.

U.S. emergency managers are slowly becoming aware of cell broadcasting technology and likely won't widely adopt it until prompted by public outcry, Klein said.

"It's going to (take) community pressure,” he said. "That's how it's going to unfold.”