In a bid to revolutionize coverage of catastrophic events, wireless emergency alerts will soon be more reliable, regardless of coverage zones.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires will no longer disrupt US citizen’s access to critical information.
T-Mobile announced that it has successfully sent and received a wireless emergency alert (WEA) via satellite—for the first time ever in the US.
The breakthrough opens up the 500,000 square miles of lightly populated, mountainous, and uninhabitable land across the country to critical, life-saving emergency alerts.
Impacts life and death situations
“This is one of those days, as the CEO of a wireless company, that makes me pause for a moment and reflect on how technology advancements and the work we’re doing is truly impacting life and death situations,” said Mike Sievert, CEO, T-Mobile.
At 5:13 pm PT on Thursday, September 5, T-Mobile initiated a test alert for a hypothetical evacuation notice.
The alert was sent 217 miles into space, where it was received by one of the more than 175 SpaceX Starlink direct-to-smartphone satellites currently in low earth orbit. These satellites effectively function as cell towers in space.
The alert was then broadcast to a geographic area impacted by the hypothetical evacuation notice and received by a T-Mobile smartphone.
In total, it took emergency operators seconds to queue up an emergency message and deliver it via Starlink satellites to users on the ground.
Will work for everyone – even Verizon, AT&T
Emergency alerts will work for everyone – even Verizon, AT&T, and other wireless provider customers will receive critical alerts.
The life-saving benefits of satellite-enabled WEAs are immense. Take the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, for example.
The fire, which ultimately burned more than 150,000 acres, forced the evacuation of 52,000 people, destroyed 19,000 structures, including most of the city of Paradise, and, most devastatingly, took 86 lives, erupted in the rural Sierra Nevada mountains.
Those who lived, worked, or played off the cellular network grid—relatively common in lightly populated areas with significant elevation changes—had no access to emergency alerts due to a lack of wireless service coverage.
The fire also destroyed 17 cell towers on the first day and 66 total during the first two weeks of the blaze, making communications with first responders or loved ones nearly impossible for many.
T-Mobile and Starlink, with more than 175 direct-to-smartphone satellites currently in low-earth orbit, are testing satellite-to-smartphone service.
Additional SpaceX launches are scheduled to add more satellites to the current constellation over the coming months, further blanketing the country with wireless coverage.
As that happens, T-Mobile intends to beta-test the service before launching it commercially.
SpaceX earlier said in a press release that T-Mobile and SpaceX have worked rapidly in response to the enthusiastic support and anticipation of T-Mobile subscribers, including First Responders, for satellite direct-to-cellular service that closes mobile “dead zones” everywhere.
Based on the success of these tests, T-Mobile and SpaceX are now poised to launch commercial service to fully realize the Chairwoman’s signature vision of a Single Network Future, connecting Americans in places that have never had mobile service.
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