Emergency Alert System; Wireless Emergency Alerts
In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) adopts rules for commercial mobile service providers that have elected to participate in the Wireless Emergency Alert system (WEA) (Participating CMS Providers) to support WEA messages in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the U.S. as well as English and American Sign Language. Participating CMS Providers are to support this expanded multilingual alerting by enabling mobile devices to display message templates that will be pre-installed and stored on the mobile device. The Commission also directs its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to seek comment on various implementation details of the multilingual alerting requirements and future expansion to additional languages. In addition, to help personalize emergency alerts, the Commission requires participating wireless providers to support the inclusion of maps in WEA messages that show the alert recipient's location relative to the geographic area where the emergency is occurring, and establishes a Commission-hosted database to provide the public with easy-to-access information on WEA availability. Wireless providers will be required to supply information on whether they participate in WEA and, if so, the extent of WEA availability in their service area and on the mobile devices that they sell. Last, to support more effective WEA performance and public awareness, the amended rules enable alerting authorities to send two local WEA tests per year that the public receives by default, provided that the alerting authority takes steps to ensure that the public is aware that the test is, in fact, only a test.