Today I was amazed to find the story of early cellular alerts and SMS hidden in a 3GPP report from 2005 (Reference number: TSGT#27(05)0051).
It describes that #SMS had two functionalities: cellular alerts, which turns out is one part of what SMS originally included, and point-to-point SMS, which is what we know as SMS today.
The document continues with “SMS has applications in all #GSM networks, while cellular alerts have none”. Wow! How the times have changed! It seems in 2005 no cellphones had cellular alerts, whereas it’s a worldwide standard today.
It took years for cellular alerts to become established (slow telco as usual!). Now almost all major countries operate “mobile population warning systems” based on cellular alerts. This extra imperative makes it mandatory that cell phone producers include cellular alert capabilities with all their phones. It’s a globally accepted standard and all mobile phone producers have to comply with it.
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Next, we learn from the document that cellular alerts didn’t catch on due to “no business justification (low revenue) and high battery drain for the receiving mobile”. The cell phone producers must have fixed these since then. But back then, no phone was capable of receiving cellular alerts. This means that SMS was the only technology available to use for mobile population warnings. It was used for national emergencies, by public personnel like the police, the fire department, and by ambulances. It was also used for local area emergencies.
The slow catch-up of the world to already available technology is something we experience so often (Wright Brothers’ first flight 1907, first commercial flight 1914), and it can also be observed here. Cellular alert was available as early as 2005 (probably earlier), but it took so many years for countries to develop systems that use it. For example UK started its cellular alert based system in 2020 after backlash for not having a functioning mobile warning system for COVID.
So many other factors are involved in a technology attaining its usefulness, and cellular alerts were no different. It’s also especially interesting to imagine how SMS carried the whole weight of mobile population warning. 2005, such a different time!
https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg_t/TSG_T/TSGT_27/Docs/PDF/TP-050051.pdf
#5G #emergencySMS #cellularalerts
Giray's Sandal 