When text messages become mission-critical

Called the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee (CMSAAC), this government initiative created in 2006 was formed to develop recommendations on technical standards and protocols to voluntarily transmit emergency alerts to their subscribers. The goal of the committee is ultimately to come up with standards, protocols, procedures and other technical requirements. Lee expects the process to take months to complete, moving at least into 2009.

“It is not just a matter of flipping a switch,” he said. “It is a matter of getting an agreement of not just the carriers but an agreement by all the device manufacturers and the companies that make the technology components to come to an agreement on the standard. Unfortunately, the need is now, as we know; the industry-wide technology is not. We as carriers can only control and have an impact on what we do with our own subscribers.”

Priority services do currently exist for voice calls in the form of the Nationwide Wireless Priority Service (WPS). In emergencies, when cellular networks are congested or network facilities have been damaged, high-priority emergency wireless calls are routed first for the next available wireless voice channel ahead of end users not subscribing to WPS Access. Similar to the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS), which allows emergency calls to avoid congestion on landline networks, the WPS is overseen by the FCC. Even in non-emergency times of high congestion, priority is assigned based on five categories of wireless ownership: executive leadership and policy makers; disaster response and military; public health, safety and law enforcement command; public services and welfare; and disaster recovery.

To date, participation in the WPS system is optional for telephone companies. Support is only available on participating networks, which include AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and usually requires additional fees for activation, availability and use. Sprint also offers Direct Connect services for push-to-talk (PTT) technology, which provides another route for cell phone users to get through to other PTT users in an emergency.

Briere is not convinced that these methods are enough. “If they wanted to prioritize SMS, they could,” he said. “Up to now they have not seen a reason to do so. What I'm suggesting is that there's a viable business case here to do so and make some very good money with premium class delivery.”

Briere could envision a system that mirrors that of Microsoft Outlook emails in which a priority level can be assigned to an email, designating it with a flag as high priority, low priority or requiring follow-up. Although a standard for what constitutes each level of priority in both the email and SMS text arenas is still needed. “It is not like we’ve solved this problem in one messaging area and now we’re solving it in another area,” Briere said.

Briere suggested putting a hurdle in place in the form of a steep initiation fee to keep the service a truly priority-driven application. Even with an initiation fee and cost per priority text sent, he still sees a viable market that would be interested for, if nothing else, legal reasons. In an emergency, all priority messages would be routed first. If leftover capacity remains, the remaining text messages would also be delivered in descending order of priority. The consumers sending messages with little or no priority would be the only messages delayed.

“Think of it is as throttling a choke point,” Briere said. “You are not redesigning the network; you are just making the network gates and the way things are sent around be throttled. It is almost like controlling the opening of a dam when there is floodwater. You may open it a little more, but you are controlling how much floodwater comes through there.”

Briere is looking into priority text messaging for his family’s start-up, MoxMe. Along with his four children and two of his children’s friends, age 11 through 14, Briere formed this Web-based company as an alert and notification portal to enable group organizers such as coaches, administrators, or civic and government organizations to communicate more effectively with individual group members. Using member-driven permission-based communications, the site translates a group message to each member’s desired mode of communication – email, cell phone, voicemail or Instant Message. Briere could envision using MoxMe, now in Beta, when an emergency arises to ensure the message is delivered as promptly as possible in a means that each individual is most likely to get right away.

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