Cell Phones for Emergency Communications

In a more recent flooding situation in the Western Pennsylvania Area in September of 2004, even the most reliable of the cellular carriers had near complete capacity related failures. The high volume of calls being attempted prevented not only voice calls but text messaging as well.

In a major emergency situation where the cellular systems reach near capacity, voice calls are the first mode to become inoperable. Quite often, during an over capacity situation, text messaging will still function. But when the cellular systems reach full capacity, you can count on cellular SMS text messaging going down, too.

PA-SitRep takes all these factors into consideration. The PA-SitRep Emergency Alert System goal is to alert our subscribers, via SMS text messaging, of major emergency situations in the earliest stages possible before cellular systems hit the critical capacity levels.

Your emergency communications plans should take into consideration that cellular service can not be relied upon as a full proof communications mode during or after major emergency situations!

Cell Phones for One Way Text Messaging (incoming)

Chances are, if you own a digital cell phone, your phone has text messaging capabilities. The service is sometimes referred to as SMS (Short Message Service). Almost all Digital Cell Phones have the capability of receiving an SMS text message, usually limited in character length anywhere from 60 - 120 characters. Most cell phones will handle up to 100 - 120 characters.

Push services are becoming more and more widely available for cell phones and alphanumeric pagers. Cell phone users can subscribe to various free push services that can be found on the internet to have text messages delivered (pushed) to your cell phone for severe weather alerts and breaking news. There are even incident reporting push services where volunteers monitor police and fire frequencies and then send out brief messages describing the incident.

The PA-SitRep (Pennsylvania [Emergency] Situation Report) e-mail list is a form of "Push" service.

Text messages are delivered to cell phones the following ways:

• E-Mail Based Message Delivery
  This is the most common delivery method for text messaging. Most cell phone service providers give the cell phone subscriber an e-mail address for their phone. This address almost always consists of the users phone number followed by the service providers address (i.e. 4125552121@vtext.com).

  Of course, this delivery method also requires the sender to access the internet in order to send the e-mail, but the advantages are that the sender can send text messages out to digital cell phone users of different service providers. The e-mail based message delivery requires the sender to know the exact e-mail address to the cell phone. When using e-mail based message delivery, the sender has to be aware of the character length of the message since some providers text messaging services are limited to as few as 85 characters. Most providers will handle messages of at least 100 characters.

  To see if your Cellular Service Provider has your account enabled for text messaging, simply send yourself an e-mail to your cell phone (or pager) by replacing "MTN" (Mobile Telephone Number) with your cell phone number, using NO spaces, dots or dashes according to the list of the cellular providers below:

  ATT Wireless - MTN@mobile.att.net
  Cellular One - MTN@mobile.celloneusa.com
  Cingular - MTN@mobile.mycingular.com
  Metrocall - MTN@page.metrocall.com
  NEXTEL - MTN@messaging.nextel.com
  Sprint PCS - MTN@messaging.sprintpcs.com
  T-Mobile - MTN@tmomail.net
  Verizon Wireless - MTN@VTEXT.com
  Voicestream - MTN@voicestream.net

  Here is a great web reference on SMS Text Messaging which lists all two way pager and cell phone addresses for the various carriers in the U.S.:
  http://www.weblinkwireless.com/customerservice/how2send/#2way2e-mail

  Keep in mind that most cell phone service providers either charge a monthly fee or a per message delivery charge for text messaging services. You will need to contact your cell phone service provider for details.

• Web Based Message Delivery
  This method of delivery requires the message sender to go to the cell phone service providers text messaging web page in order to enter and send the message to the cell phone. Obviously, the sender has to have access to the internet to send the message. The service provider text messaging web site is useful for sending text messages to the phone for one reason and that is that this page will usually have a character counter that tells you if your message is too long for the cell phone to read. Also, when using most of the service providers text messaging web sites, the sender only needs to know the mobile telephone number of the user and not their entire text messaging e-mail address. One of the main disadvantages to the web based delivery is that if you are sending a group message out to multiple cell phones, you can't send the messages to multiple users of different providers. And some of these message delivery sites will not allow message to be sent to more than one user. Some providers will allow only a few recipients.

  I will be providing the web addresses for the major Cell Phone Service Providers' text messaging sites, so please check back regularly.

• TAP (Telocator Alphanumeric Protocol)
  This is the least common text message delivery method to cell phones. This method requires a computer and a modem and TAP software. This delivery method is most commonly used by large disaster relief organizations (i.e. Salvation Army) because they can reach MANY users of different providers at the same time. The software has to be set up with each individual address (usually the cell phone number), the TAP dial in number for the particular cellphone's provider (not all cell phone providers offer TAP dial in numbers) and the baud rate, data bits, parity and stop bit.

  Here is the info (for example purposes) for Verizon Wireless TAP

  Dial In Number:
  866-823-0501

  Protocol:
  2400 baud standard TAP
  7 data bits
  even parity
  1 stop bit

  Check with your cell phone service provider to see if they offer TAP message delivery. If you do find that they do, please send me the service provider's name, dial in number and protocol and I'll list it on this page.

Cell Phones for Two Way Text Messaging (send and receive)

This is becoming a more common feature on the newer digital cell phones. Two way messaging allows the cell phone user to not only receive text messages to the cell phone but to also send from the phone as well. Text entry on the phone is sometimes aided by the utilization of software built into the phone that anticipates the most common words according to the combination of keys when entering the text from the cell phone keypad. Text entry on the phone takes a little bit of practice, but is not terribly difficult. Two way capable text messaging from the cell phone allows the user to reply to incoming text messages and to compose and send new text messages. Most cell phone service providers allow the cell phone user to not only send text messages to others on their network, but to any e-mail address.

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