Wireless Emergency Alerts Get An Upgrade

[Megalith]

Those deafening emergency alerts will now be a bit more elaborate: the FCC has increased the length of messages from 90 to 360 characters, which will now also include links and phone numbers. There will additionally be a new class of alerts for public safety.

The Federal Communications Commission has now voted to quadruple the maximum length of the alert to 360 characters and begin including clickable hyperlinks and phone numbers in the alerts, including Amber alerts. The phone carriers will be allowed to include the URLs and numbers within about a month and required to do so in about a year. The rules for now still won't allow for photos to be directly included in the messages, but the FCC is reviewing the possibility for the future. The order approved on Thursday does, however, push for alerts to be delivered more precisely to specific areas and requires support of alerts in Spanish as well as English.

 

[DrLobotomy]

An attack is eminent.

 

[Azphira]

An attack is eminent.

With links to funeral homes.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Never heard an emergency alert on my phone, but fuck me when an Amber alert went out, it pissed me off to the point of turning off that alert. I'm sorry that there's a child who was abducted, but you gotta prioritize how important it really is, if I'm asleep with my phone turned to vibrate, the alert should not override my speaker settings and wake me up if my life isn't potentially at risk. When I wake up, I'll look at my phone and see "oh an amber alert let me take a look" and then if I'm going out I'll keep an eye out, but nothing is going to get me out of bed and start searching or what not just because it happened to be in my geographical region (which exceeds 1 million people within a 10 mile radius, and a bunch of that radius is over the ocean!)