Harvey Hurricane shows it is time for FCC to improve emergency alerts

[Commentary] It’s time to stop the regulatory foot-dragging and require the mobile phone industry to use its technology’s capabilities to deliver safety alerts with the same accuracy that delivers a taxi and the same functionality that delivers video. Immediately after the installation of the Trump Federal Communications Commission, the mobile carriers filed a petition to stop the implementation of the earlier decision on Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) improvements that were strongly advocated by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children as well as public safety managers across the country. The Trump FCC magnified the failure of the current system by not acting on the WEA improvements proposed last September. The new FCC majority even removed wireless alerts form the charter of the public safety and industry working group that made the original recommendations.

If the Obama FCC regulations and recommendations were in effect, geo-targeting could deliver the precise message to specific audiences; those messages could contain links to maps and other important information; and the ability to link with users would allow the collection of information from victims, providing a rapid triage among survivors and targeting the delivery of rescue and other services. Instead, in Houston, victims overloaded the 911 system and public safety officials had to resort to social media. The FCC must learn from what happened in Hurricane Harvey.

[Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow with the Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation, and former Chairman to the FCC.]