NTCA Members Receive Discount on CMAS Specs until January 15
Posted by Jesse Ward on Friday, January 8, 2010 · 
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One of Congress’ and the FCC’s top priorities is to ensure that all Americans have access to timely emergency alerts and critical information.
Historically, we have relied on audio-only radio and television alerts. However, as the nation moves to a converged and mobile society, the government is expanding to a next-gen warning system: the Integrated Public Alert and Warning (IPAWS) system.
The Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) is one of many IPAWS systems which enables mobile service providers to warn the public of immediate threats thorough geographically targeted messages – audio at first but there are plans for video and multimedia down the line.
The system will facilitate three types of alerts: presidential, imminent threat, and America’s Missing: broadcast emergency response alerts (AMBER) alerts. The federal government will aggregate, authenticate and transmit alerts to CMS providers. In turn, mobile service providers will disseminate the alerts to subscribers.
The FCC has mandated that all mobile service licensees must inform the commission whether or not they plan to participate in the CMAS program – and if a service provider chooses not to participate it must notify new and existing subscribers of this decision.
A group of government and industry representatives, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) have developed “C” interface specifications for the interface between the FEMA CMAS gateway and the commercial mobile service provider (CMSP) gateways.
The specification defines how service providers should interface with the federal gateway and process alerts; it also provides clear definitions around general system, quality of service and security requirements.
NTCA members receive a 50% discount on the CMAS “C” Interface Specification until January 15, 2010. (Regular price $350, NTCA price $175) The specifications are available through ATIS. For the discount code, please contact Karlen Reed or Jesse Ward.
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