Miss Mobile here. I was just reading that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said it would be the national coordinator for a “cell phone alert system,” which would, I’m guessing, send mobile alerts to warn people of natural and man-made disasters. I say “I’m guessing” because the article wasn’t very clear about what the system would actually do.

According to FEMA’s press release, it will “perform the unified aggregator/gateway role for the Commercial Mobile Alert System, mandated by the Warning Alert Response Network (WARN) Act. It is anticipated that the Alert Aggregator/Gateway system, which has not yet been designed or engineered, will be able to verify that federal, state and local emergency alerts are sent by ‘authorized senders,’ and then transmit the alerts to commercial mobile service providers, which will, in turn, send them to their cellular subscribers in specific geographic areas.”

In my mind, an alert system is a great idea. I never go anywhere without my trusty RAZR (it’s charging beside me right now), and I would welcome a text message from my government telling me that I need to skip town because a hurricane is heading my direction.

I wonder though how FEMA is going to go about getting my mobile number. And your mobile number. And your mother’s mobile number. That’s going to be one gigantic opt-in list….

Tags: address list, alert system, cell phone, cell phone alert system, FEMA, mobile alert, mobile alert system, mobile marketing, opt-in, RAZR

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 4:01 pm and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.