Canada’s Emergency Alert System gaining wireless capabilities

Starting recently, all Canadian Emergency Alerts can now be delivered wirelessly to your cell phone.

With the addition of wireless public alerting to Alert Ready, Canada’s national public alerting system, government agencies can deliver more emergency alerts during threat-to-life situations.

Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness says, “Canadians expect to receive information on emergencies through the same tools they use every day, from all levels of government working together.

“The expansion of Canada’s alerting system to include wireless emergency alerts will ensure Canadians have the critical info they need at their fingertips.”

A national public awareness campaign launched last month, led by Pelmorex Corp, in partnership with wireless service providers and federal and provincial government agencies.

All Canadians are being encouraged to visit Alertready.ca to find out if their current cell phone is WPA-compatible.

Providers have created lists of compatible devices, capable of receiving wireless public alerts.

Even devices on the list should have software updated to ensure that they have alerting functionality.

In order to receive emergency alerts, the wireless device must meet three conditions: it must be an LTE-device like a smartphone; it must be wireless public alerting compatible (see your provider’s list of compatible devices), and it must be connected to an LTE cellular network at the time an emergency alert is issued.

Wireless alerts are sent on a specific cellular channel that’s separate from normal text and data traffic.

“While the alerts may look like text messages, they are not text messages, and are not billed like text messages,” says AlertReady.

“Emergency Alerts are sent to wireless devices in a specific geographic area and do not require the phone numbers of those devices. As such, there is no ability to identify or bill for the messages that are received.”