Hosted commercial mobile alert system (CMAS) from Interop enables affordable compliance with FCC mandate

CTIA WIRELESS 2011, FORT MYERS, USA: Interop Technologies, a provider of core wireless solutions for messaging, device management, and connectivity gateways, now offers a hosted Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS), enabling wireless operators to deliver alert messages originating from the Federal Alert Gateway to their subscribers without deploying a cost-prohibitive system on their network.

Since Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations stipulate that operators cannot generate revenue from the delivery of Presidential, Imminent Threat, and AMBER public-safety alerts, operators often find it difficult to justify the up-front investment required to implement a commercially available on-network CMAS system. However, operators that do not comply with the mandate risk losing subscribers to competitors that offer the valuable alert service.

The Interop Technologies hosted CMAS Gateway helps operators offer protection and security to their subscriber base while significantly reducing the investment and staff resources needed to deploy an on-network CMAS system. In addition, the Interop solution has negligible impact on an operator’s network. A simple connection from the Interop hosted CMAS Gateway to an operator’s GSM, CDMA, or UMTS network via a standardized TCP/IP interface (3GPP or 3GPP2) supports delivery of text-based alerts over an operator’s cellular broadcast network directly to subscribers with CMAS-compatible handsets.

In addition to meeting compliance guidelines by implementing Interop’s cost-effective hosted solution, operators benefit from Interop’s highly secure, geo-redundant hosting facilities, offering “five nines” (99.999 percent) reliability—essential for public-safety purposes.

Under the Government Interface Design Specification for the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert and Warning System) Federal Alert Aggregator/Gateway, operators that “opt-in” to CMAS must deploy a system by April 7, 2012. Interop Technologies will work with operators to ensure their hosted CMAS capability is fully tested and operational in time to meet the government-specified launch date. There are no subscriber opt-in requirements to receive the alerts.