FEMA Service Provides Emergency Alerts to Cell Phones and Pagers

FEMA, in conjunction with the Association of Public Television Stations, will begin sending emergency alerts to cell phones and other text-messaging-enabled devices in addition to the radio and television alerts that are currently broadcast as part of the Emergency Alert System (EAS). The wireless alerts service is expected to be in place sometime in 2007, according to a release from the Incident Page Network.

What the report doesn’t say, continues the release, is that such a system is already in place in the private sector in the form of "IPN," the Incident Page Network. Covering everything from tornado warnings to plane crashes to terrorist attacks, the IPN system sends out thousands of emergency alerts each week to cell phones, pagers, PDAs and e-mail addresses in real time, as incidents are happening.

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