What is Cell Broadcast?

Cell Broadcast is a standard feature withing the GSM and UMTS standards. It is present in 90% of all GSM handsets that are currently in use and unfortunately support for UMTS/Smartphones is still limited (2011). Cell Broadcast enables a network operator to broadcast a message to all GSM/UMTS handsets that are physically present in a certain region. The region can be as small as one GSM network cell and as large as the whole coverage area of the network operator. This makes Cell Broadcast an ideal platform for distributing location based information to large numbers of GSM/UMTS subscribers. And since there is no need to address individual handsets, Cell Broadcast messages can be delivered to one, one hundred or even millions of handsets in minutes. On GSM, a Cell Broadcast message can contain 93 characters per page with a mximum of 15 pages.

As the word already says, Cell Broadcast is a broadcast mechanism and can best be compared with a service like teletext. Nearly every television is able to receive teletext messages, but the Broadcasting Company does not know who is watching teletext and consequently is not able to charge individual end users for the service. In teletext, users can select a page to view. Cell Broadcast works with channels (approximately 65000 maximum) and an end user is able to select as many channels as desired. Cell Broadcast messages can be displayed directly on the handset display or after pushing a button.

What can you do with Cell Broadcast?

Cell Broadcast can be used for both commercial as well as government applications. Some examples....

Commercial
When business is low at a certain time of day, the manager of a local McDonalds could -with the push of a button- broadcast a message to all handsets in the region with a special offer to attract consumers to the restaurant.
A gaming application could use Cell Broadcast to instruct gamers depending upon their physical location.
A chemical company can inform its staff at a chemical plant about dangerous situations.

Government
Cell Broadcast can be used for public warning services and civil alert (e.g. terrorism alert) information from the government to citizens.
Users of roads and waterways can be informed about urgent traffic problems when entering a certain area.

Cell Broadcast has been there for a long time. Why is it only getting hot now?

Mobile network operators have never seen great opportunities for Cell Broadcast. They cannot charge end users for receiving Cell Broadcast messages so it is a wholesale service which requires mobile companies to get their revenues from corporates. Cell Broadcast is potentially also competing with other, profitable, applications like SMS, i-mode or voice. Therefore mobile operators have not spent a great deal of their marketing budgets on Cell Broadcast.

Recent international disasters like the tsunami and increasing international terrorism threats are putting more and more pressure on governments to invest in communications with their citizens. Cell Broadcast can be an ideal platform to distribute location-specific, direct and urgent information to large groups of citizens. Modern governments are therefore considering Cell Broadcast as an additional mean to communicate with citizens.

Public Warning, the killer application for Cell Broadcast?
Civil alarm has great potential as killer application for Cell Broadcast. Cell Broadcast enables a government to alarm or alert large groups of citizens on a specific location or the whole country. Even more important, governments can instruct citizens what to do and increase the ability to cope for oneself.
Since the target audience is large (the whole population) the costs per citizen are relatively low.

Read more on Cell Broadcast for civil alarm in our whitepaper (Dutch version).

Challenges when introducing a cell broadcast service

As stated above, mobile operators are not very keen to introduce this service, since they find it difficult to see the business model. Another challenge is that the technology is old and proven, but hardly used. Therefore support for cell broadcast in mobile telephones is a challenge. Older types of GSM phones have excellent support. However, at the introduction of UMTS/WCDMA smarthones, support has become very poor. Fortunately, we now (2011) see that support on smartphones is improving due to the introduction of EU-Alert, NL-Alert, CMAS/PLAN in the USA and the ETWS system in Japan.

What is NL-Alert?

NL-Alert is the Netherlands implementation of a Public Warning System via cell broadcast. It enables PSAPs in 25 security regions to alert, alarm or inform the public. The system is able to send messages in case of urgent, life-threatening or health-threatening events via the infrastructures of all current Netherlands mobile operators. NL-Alert supports the public with a website on how to configure mobile phones (instelhulp.nlalert.nl) and the mobile operators are pre-configuring mobile phones before reaching the Point of Sale. NL-Alert is the first implementation of a Public Warning System under the European EU-Alert. The Netherlands is actively promoting other EU countries to implement their national service.

Future of mobile phone support (including accessibility for the blind and deaf)

The USA has standardised the behaviour of mobile phones for the CMAS/PLAN mobile alerting system. NL-Alet decided to adopt the handset behaviour described in the CMAS standards. The first implementations of that standard are already appearing in the market since early 2011 (SonyEricsson). Mobile phones produce a specific alarm tone and vibration cadence when receiving an alarm. This is very imporant to alert the mobile phone owner and for special groups like blind or deaf people.

What is Conict Consultants experience with Cell Broadcast?

The Netherlands government has been experimenting with Cell Broadcast since early 2005. Conict Consultant has been the main advisor for The Netherlands Government since then. Some of the deliverables and roles that we have played over the recent years:

- Main architect of the co-operation between the mobile operators, enabling the mobile operators to come on board

- Debvelopment of the procurement strategy for the service

- Chairman of the EU-Project: Cell broadcast for Public Warning, initiated by The Netherlands and joined by 15 W-European countries

- Responsible for drafting the technical requirements for mobile operators and message broker function

- Project management for the implementation of the service by the mobile operators and the broker

- Project management of the implementation of the mobile telephone database (instelhulp.nlalert.nl)

- Responsible for lobbying towards the industry (e.g. Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia, SonyEricsson, ETSI, 3GPP)