TIA Technical Committee
May 2, 2007
Report to the Technical Committee
FCC CMSAAC (Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee) Activities
Background
On October 13th, 2006, President Bush signed the Port Security Bill (HR 4954), which
includes a provision for addressing a wireless Emergency Alert System (EAS). This
wireless EAS provision is an update to the Warning, Alert and Response Network
(WARN) Act (S 1753) created in the 1960s.
Pursuant to the WARN ACT, the FCC established the Commercial Mobile Service Alert
Advisory Committee (CMSAAC). The Committee will develop recommendations on
technical standards and protocols to facilitate the ability of commercial mobile service
providers to transmit emergency alerts to their subscribers.
The TIA representative on the Committee is Cheryl Blum, Chair TR-45.
Public documents from the CMSAAC can be found on the www.fcc.gov website.
The CMSAAC held its first meeting on December 12, 2006 at FCC Headquarters. The
Committee is chaired by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. There are 41 members of the
CMSAAC, from:
 State, Local, and Tribal Government representatives,
 CMRS Service Providers, Equipment Providers,
 Third Party Service Bureaus, Broadcasters,
 ATIS, CTIA, TIA, Rural Carriers Association,
 Organizations representing individuals with Special Needs,
 FEMA,
 DHS,
 Other Interested Parties.
The structure of the Committee was defined during the first meeting. Four Working
Groups were formed plus a Program Management Group.

Program Management Group (PMG)
This group is the overall management entity for the Committee. Members of the
Group include the Chairs and Deputy Chairs of the other four groups.

Alerting Interface Group (AIG)
The mission of the AIG is “to recommend specific public alert and warning
systems for inclusion into a commercial mobile service alerting capability for
CMS providers that voluntarily elect to transmit emergency alerts and to
recommend the technical fashion by which electing CMS providers can accept
these alerts for distribution within their respective networks”.
TIA Technical Committee

May 2, 2007
Alerting Gateway Group (AGG)
The mission of the AGG is “to develop and submit recommendations for
protocols, technical capabilities and technical procedures through which CMS
providers, receive, verify and transmit alerts to subscribers”. TIA is a voting
member of this group.

Communications Technology Group (CTG)
The mission of the CTG is “to develop and submit recommendations for relevant
technical standards for devices and equipment and technologies used by electing
CMS providers to transmit emergency alerts to subscribers”. TIA is a voting
member of this group.

User Needs Group (UNG)
The mission of the UNG is “to address the needs of the customers of CMS
providers that voluntarily elect to transmit emergency alerts, particularly nonEnglish speaking customers and other special needs”. TIA is an observer in this
group.
My observation is that the recommendations of the CMSAAC may result in future TIA
standards development in Committees TR-45 and TR-47 for support of Commercial
Mobile Alerts (CMA).
Work Plan and Meeting Schedule
Each of the Working Groups has one face to face meeting each month in the D.C. area.
In addition, each group convenes about 2 conference calls each month.
A second meeting of the FCC CMSAAC was held on March 12th. The upcoming
schedule of meetings for the full CMSAAC is:
 May 16
 July 18
 September 19
 October 5
The October 5th date is significant since a vote will be taken on the final draft of
recommendations for CMAS (Commercial Mobile Alert Systems). TIA as a member of
the CMSAAC will have to determine its vote on the document. The final
recommendations will be presented to the FCC on October 12th.
The work plan to meet the October 5th date is very aggressive. The first draft of the
recommendations from the four Working Groups is due on May 30th, the second draft
due on June 28th, and final set of recommendations by September 7th. The final draft of
recommendations will be delivered to the Committee membership on September 21st,
with the CMSAAC vote scheduled for October 5th.
Per the WARN Act, the FCC has 180 days, from receipt of the CMSAAC
recommendations on October 12, to issue a Ruling/Report and Order on requirements
TIA Technical Committee
May 2, 2007
and recommendations to support CMAS. Mobile operators will notify the FCC of their
election to provide CMA in September 2008.
Working Assumptions of the Program Management Group
1. The alerting initiation platform should perform an alert aggregation function,
presenting an integrated alert interface to the alerting gateway that includes
alerts from all authorized sources. This alerting initiation platform should be
administered by a government agency to ensure authenticity and prioritization of
alerts.
2. The Commercial Mobile Alerting System (CMAS) must only be used for the
dissemination of public alerts regarding immediate, serious and likely threats to
life, health or property; and for updates, amendments and cancellations of such
alerts.
3. The CMAS must be available for alert origination only on the authority of federal,
tribal, state and local government officials with responsibilities for public safety,
health and security.
4. The CMAS must support a method for credible and reliable authentication of
authorized originators.
5. The CMAS must support a method for ensuring the integrity of message content
as delivered to the carrier, ensuring that the alerts delivered to that point
accurately reflect the originator’s input.
6. The CMAS must provide reliable attribution of each alert message to its
authorized originator.
7. Responsibility for the accuracy, completeness and appropriateness of CMAS
alert content must rest solely with the originating agency.
8. Within the constraints of a standard input format, the CMAS must not filter, edit,
amend or restrict any authorized originator’s message content or intent, with the
exception of such automatic and consistent transformations as may be required
for technical purposes.
9. The CMAS must deliver all alerts to the carrier from authorized originators
without avoidable procedural or technical delays. However, where multiple alerts
are in process at the same time, they may be sequenced on the basis of the
urgency, severity and certainty of the alert information.
10. The CMAS should, if possible, provide a unique and consistent user experience
to all alert recipients, using, for example, standardized audio tones, vibration
cadences and language-independent visual symbology. These standard signals
must be available for authorized use within the CMAS without charge, but must
be legally protected against other uses.
11. The CMAS must, to the greatest extent feasible, restrict alert delivery to
recipients located in the geographic area at risk and minimize delivery in other
areas.
12. The alert may be retransmitted in the geographic area until the alert expires, is
updated, or is cancelled subject to the capabilities of the delivery technologies.
Any mobile device users entering the target area may receive the emergency
alert subject to the delivery technologies, device capabilities and inter-carrier
roaming agreements.
13. The CMAS must provide a consistent technical interface to alert origination
applications using the OASIS CAP format, which must be available at multiple
TIA Technical Committee
May 2, 2007
geographic and network locations. Any authorized originator must be able to
submit an alert through any reachable instance of the input interface.
14. The CMAS must provide reasonable redundancy to avoid, to the greatest extent
feasible, the creation of a single point of failure.
15. The CMAS must implement a comprehensive trust model for the issuance and
maintenance of access credentials.
16. Specific legal authority must be established for prohibiting unauthorized or
improper use of the CMAS or for willful interference with its functioning.
CMAS Reference Model
The CMAS is basically comprised of 3 major functional areas:
1. The Alerting Interface – Alerting Gateway (i.e., generation of alert message by
authorized agent, aggregation of alerts and verification of authenticity of alert
from authorized agent, distribution of alert by alerting gateway via interface to the
wireless service providers infrastructure). This functionality is in the government
domain.
2. The Wireless Service Providers Infrastructure, for transmission of alert to Mobile
Device
3. Mobile Device
The major impact for support of the CMAS is on the
 Alerting Gateway,
 Interface to the Wireless Service Providers Infrastructure (know as the “C”
Interface)
 Mobile Device
Some issues under discussion by the CMSAAC Working Groups include:







Definition of service profiles for delivery of alert message. This includes text,
audio, video, and multimedia. Note the CMAS service profiles for text, audio,
video, and multimedia messages are for the transmission of text data, audio files,
video files, and multimedia files and not for the presentation of real-time content.
Geo-targeting for CMAS Alerts, with minimum being at county level (although
service provider may target smaller areas if they choose)
Logging of messages received and transmitted (by the alerting gateway and the
wireless operator)
Retransmissions of alerts considering performance impacts on wireless
operator’s infrastructure, battery life, etc.
Mapping of CAP (Common Alerting Protocol in current use today by EAS
systems) elements to wireless alerts
Functions of the Mobile Device, including ability to allow user to opt-in/opt-out of
categories of alerts with the exception of presidential alerts, standardized alerting
tone, vibrating cadence, extraction of wireless alert message in preferred
language (or default to English), detection/suppression of presentation of
duplicate wireless alert messages, etc.
Testing requirements (weekly tests used by current EAS systems)
TIA Technical Committee
May 2, 2007
TR-45 Ad-Hoc Group on Wireless Alerts (AHGWA)
In February, TR-45 established an Ad-Hoc Group on Wireless Alerts. This group was
created as a result of the FCC Committee activities on Commercial Mobile Service Alert.
The purpose of the group is to inform the TR-45 members of the activities of the FCC
CMSAAC and its associated Working Groups, and to raise any issues or concerns which
may need to be brought to the attention of the CMSAAC. The Chair of the Ad-Hoc is
DeWayne Sennett, AT&T. DeWayne is also the secretary of the CMSAAC
Communication Technology Group and editor of its Output Document.
AHGWA public documents can be found at: http://ftp.tiaonline.org/TR-45/TR45AHGWA.