Coverage of the rollout of the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS, also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts, or WEA), is getting more attention these days. We have seen articles from Mobile Health News, Ubergizmo, Mobile Burn, and a slew of local news outlets. Perhaps the biggest coverage came last night from NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams. The short video clip is below:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The surge of news appears to be spurred by coverage in USA Today, including quotes from CTIA – The Wireless Association (the trade group representing wireless carriers that play a vital role in the delivery of CMAS messages) and the National Weather Service.

This increasing publicity for CMAS is undoubtedly a good thing. What we know from social science is that the public must trust an emergency alert if they are to take prescribed action. This requires first and foremost understanding what CMAS is and that it exists in the first place. As we have reported previously, fear and concern can spread when people receive an alert without any prior awareness of this capability. When an emergency arises, if people are aware of this mobile alert capability, they will be more likely to take action without hesitation or confusion.

On May 1-3, an Emergency Alerting Policy Workshop was held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The event focused mainly on use of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), and was sponsored by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Environment Canada (Canada’s weather bureau), Public Safety Canada (responsible for public alerting and alerting between officials), and Canada Center for Security Sciences. Many interesting policy issues were discussed, including the unique challenges of Google.org regarding its Google Public Alerts feature.

Challenges facing Google Public Alerts

Google monitors CAP feeds and displays the alerts in both Google search results and Google Maps accessed for the affected area. Placement on the search results page is dependent on the values in the CAP Urgency, Severity and Certainty elements. In addition to the alert itself, Google displays any relevant media reports or other related stories, such as reports of flooded roads shown next to a Flash Flood Warning. If an alert is not of sufficient importance to show up on its own in a search, a specific search for terms in the alert will return the alert in search results.

Google’s primary request of originators is that they use CAP and stick to the specification, make the feed publically available, and use web-accessible formats like RSS and Atom or use Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE). Google said they are seeing a lot of “bad” CAP, and they would like a mechanism to provide feedback to alert originators – how might that be done? Google is currently using CAP feeds from the National Weather Service (NWS) and United States Geological Survey (USGS). They will soon be getting alerts from FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) and Canada’s National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System (NAADS).

One of Google’s dilemmas is where to go next – how do they identify additional legitimate CAP feeds? It was mentioned that WMO has a posted Register of Alerting Authority, but that is primarily only weather-related agencies. Another ask from Google was for a global Event List. While participants felt it may be an uphill battle to convince all countries to use the same list, Google requested that at a minimum any CAP alert originators post their Event List in a free and open manner. Currently, Google displays its own event code description with each alert. The issues Google presented are good food for thought for all alert originators as more third party disseminators come online.

Alerting Across International Borders

Issues facing the U.S. and Canada regarding cross-border alerting were brought up. Greater harmonization between the CAP Profiles of the two countries is needed. Here are a few examples of the divergence:

• Canada has 140 event codes; the U.S. has far fewer.
• Canada uses an Incident Layer, a second polygon that defines the area of the actual incident within the greater area that is being alerted; the U.S. does not.
• The U.S. has a cell broadcast mobile alerting system; Canada does not.
• The U.S. requires its broadcasters and cable operators to have a CAP decoder to air CAP alerts; Canada does not.

Despite these outstanding differences, the U.S. and Canada recently established connections between their two systems and are able to exchange alert messages – because they are both CAP-based. With the hurdles of interconnection behind them, these two countries can now concentrate on capitalizing on the strengths of each other’s systems.

CAP Worldwide

It was noted that the use of CAP is spreading around the globe. Italy is using CAP; China is beginning to use CAP, using various CAP elements for their different dissemination means; Japan is using a format called JMX, which can be converted to CAP; Switzerland is also using a format similar to CAP, and the official who attended the workshop wants to convert the country to CAP; the meteorological agency in Sweden has been using CAP since 2009, and wants to convince other Swedish agencies to convert to CAP.

While the assembled 80-90 participants from the emergency alerting community knew we wouldn’t be establishing global CAP policy harmonization in this one session, it did reveal the greater needs of message consumers and what individual alerting systems can do to make their CAP alerts more user friendly.

The three-day workshop ended with a CAP alerting interoperability demonstration featuring vendors MyStateUSA, ESRI, Google, and Cellcast, all originating, exchanging and/or displaying CAP alerts from FEMA’s IPAWS and Canada’s Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System Information Exchange (MASAS-X). A similar workshop is being planned for 2013.

AWARE has just received an invitation to the upcoming Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) Town Hall being held on Tuesday, May 22, in conjunction with the 6th Annual National Homeland Security Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

The CMAS Town Hall will provide alert and warnings stakeholders with a timely opportunity to help shape current and future planning of CMAS Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation (RDT&E).  With a strong focus on mobile communications, Conference participants will also collaborate with colleagues nationwide to inform guidance for integrating CMAS and increasing the market penetration of CMAS-capable devices.

The agenda is below, and the full invitation is available in PDF here.

When:
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
3:00 – 5:00 PM EST 

Where:
2012 National Homeland Security Conference
Rooms C120-C121
Columbus Convention Center
400 North High Street, Columbus, OH, 43215

Registration: http://cmastownhall.eventbrite.com  

Agenda:

To learn more or to keep in touch on future CMAS RDT&E activities, you can email CMAS_Forum@sra.com.

First Google and now Weather.com is getting into the alerts and notifications business.

Weather.com currently has a paid alert subscription service Notify! After paying a monthly fee and entering your zip-code you will receive a phone calls from none other than Jim Cantore (we assume pre-recorded) alerting you to a weather related emergency in your area.

This week they rolled out a new redesign of weather.com and are beginning to build out a weather alert system based on social media.  The idea is that when you are visiting weather.com you will be able to see if there is a weather alert that effects a friend or family member and then post it directly to their Facebook wall.

Weather.com believes that their 54 million visitors a month will have a more personal alerting experience than the one they get through EAS.

“It takes that annoying tone you get on radio or TV and makes it really, really personal,” Finnerty says.

While the National Weather Service (NWS), Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have traditionally relied on television and radio to broadcast severe weather warnings, websites such as Weather.com could play a big part in pushing those warnings out through the most recently mainstream form of media.

What are your thoughts on weather.com’s alert initiatives? Is anyone else excited about posting weather alerts to their mom’s Facebook page? Let us know in the comments…

We recently had the opportunity to interview Mike Gerber of the National Weather Service (NWS) about the NWS’s plans for the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS), also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). As you may know, CMAS/WEA enables alert originators to send geographically targeted alert messages to mobile devices across the country, currently to a space as small as a county. Though local and state emergency management offices are able to originate alerts (and have been signing up with FEMA to do so), many expect the NWS to originate the vast majority of all CMAS messages sent, due to its role in alerts and warnings around weather events.

More information on the NWS’s plans for CMAS/WEA is available in this season’s edition of the NWS newsletter Aware (no relation to this blog AWARE). According to that most recent issue, the NWS will issue CMAS/WEA alerts for initial issuance of the following warning types:

• Tsunami Warnings
• Tornado Warnings
• Flash Flood Warnings
• Extreme Wind Warnings
• Hurricane and Typhoon Warnings
• Blizzard Warnings
• Ice Storm Warnings
• Dust Storm Warnings

1. What is your timeframe to implement CMAS in your community/agency?

We plan to begin pushing CAP v1.2 to FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) in May.  This means wireless carriers will be able to pick up NWS alerts from IPAWS and distribute them to millions of cell phones over CMAS/WEA in time for summer and the upcoming tropical weather season.

2. How do you plan to integrate CMAS with your current alerting systems?

People must recognize that CMAS/WEA is merely one tool in our nation’s larger warning network.  CMAS/WEA messages are based on the same warnings that are already being issued by the NWS and distributed through other alerting systems.  The difference is that CMAS/WEA, in its current form, is a 90 character text-like message intended to act as a bell ringer or notification of a significant threat in the recipient’s area.  When the recipient receives the message, they should take the action prescribed in the message and seek further information via their mobile device, NOAA Weather Radio, web, television, radio, and other electronic media sources.

3. What are the advantages of CMAS for your agency?

The NWS mission is all about protection of life and property.  CMAS/WEA is another way to get critical NWS information to the people who need it when they need it, so that we can best save lives and protect property.  Social scientists continue to tell us that people don’t take decisive life-saving action until they hear an alert from a trusted source and often times they’ll want to hear it from multiple sources before taking action.  We expect CMAS/WEA to not only help further our mission, but more importantly, to be a life-saving tool for the general public.  CMAS/WEA has the potential to be a major contributor in the arsenal of public alerting systems.

4. What would make CMAS more effective for your agency?

Proximity-based alerting would be ideal.  Currently, there is a limitation with CMAS/WEA in regard to its geo-targeting of the recipient that may result in over-warning.  Wireless carriers are only required to alert their customer down to the county level.  However, for short-fused events such as tornadoes, the NWS defines the warning area in the form of a polygon which is usually smaller than the size of a county.  The first step in making CMAS more effective would be for wireless carriers to target their customers more precisely by warning down to the polygon level.  The ideal state would be for CMAS to become a service that broadcasts weather and other hazard location information to the recipient’s mobile device, whereby the  device  determines if the recipient is in the path of the hazard and warns accordingly.

5. How are you coordinating with other alerting agencies (state/local/tribal/territorial/federal)?

All CMAS/WEA participants and stakeholders need to ensure that community decision makers and the general public know about CMAS/WEA and the intent of a CMAS/WEA message, so that the people respond appropriately to the messages.  Since last year, we have been informing the emergency management community about CMAS/WEA in the NWS Aware Report, a quarterly newsletter to nearly 2,000 members of the emergency management community.  The NWS has also drafted a one page FAQ sheet that covers the most important points about CMAS/WEA from a user’s perspective.  By May, we plan to distribute the one-pager to local media and emergency managers through our Warning Coordination Meteorologists (WCMs) and Service Coordination Hydrologists (SCHs) who are located at over 120 local NWS offices around the country.   Our WCMs and SCHs have outstanding working relationships with local media and emergency managers.

Back in January, we at AWARE compiled a list of resources provided by wireless carriers on the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS), including lists of CMAS-capable devices sold by each carrier. Since then, the rollout of CMAS (also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts, or WEA) has begun, and, not surprisingly, participating carriers have provided more information to customers on the system, as well as updated lists of handsets that will be able to receive a CMAS message.

CTIA has published a helpful collection of information from several participating carriers. Below are links to each carrier’s page on CMAS/WEA, as well as a listing of available CMAS-compatible devices, if the carrier has published these.

AT&T’s website provides an FAQ on CMAS. Capable devices are listed below; the carrier also states that it will be working to bring more CMAS-capable devices on during 2012:

• Samsung Galaxy SII (SGH-i777)
• Samsung Captivate Glide (SGH-i927)
• Motorola Atrix 2 (mb865)

Cellcom’s website provides an FAQ with background on CMAS. (If you are not familiar with Cellcom, they are a regional carrier offering coverage in Wisconsin and Michigan.) Cellcom currently offers one CMAS-capable device: the Motorola Milestone X2. The carrier states that “as new devices are launched, we will specify if the device is WEA capable.”

Cricket’s website offers a brief FAQ on CMAS. The page includes a link to a list of CMAS-capable devices; however, this page was not operational when we conducted our research. If you are able to access this information, please let us know.

Sprint’s website provides a host of resources on CMAS, including information on the New York City test back in December 2011. CMAS-capable devices include:

• Sanyo Inuendo
• Sanyo Vero
• Sanyo Milano
• HTC EVO 3D
• Samsung Galaxy SII 4G Touch
• LG Marque
• Kyocera DuraMax
• Kyocera Duracore
• Kyocera Brio
• Samsung Trender
• HTC EVO Design 4G
• Samsung Transform Ultra

T-Mobile’s website offers a list of FAQs on CMAS. And as we reported back in January, the site has included a “CMAS” feature checkbox on its phone shopping page, so customers can compare CMAS support alongside other features they might be interested in such as QWERTY keyboards or 4G. CMAS-capable handsets at T-Mobile include:

• LG DoublePlay
• Nokia Lumia 710
• T-Mobile MyTouch (including models Q and 4G)
• Samsung Galaxy S

US Cellular provides one of the more extensive FAQs on CMAS, and currently offers three CMAS-capable devices:

• Samsung Character R640
• BlackBerry Curve 9350
• BlackBerry Torch 9850

Verizon’s website offers an FAQ on CMAS and states that it currently offers CMAS in New York City and Washington, DC. Its CMAS-capable devices include:

• Droid 2 Global by Motorola
• Droid Pro by Motorola
• Droid X2 by Motorola
• Motorola Citrus
• LG Cosmos 2
• LG Revere
• LG Enlighten

It should be noted that while these carriers combine to cover the vast majority of the U.S., there are 123 total carriers of various sizes that have opted to carry CMAS messages, according to the Federal Communication Commission’s latest registry of CMAS carriers (available here – links to a spreadsheet).  It seems less information is available from these carriers on which handsets can receive CMAS messages. If you have seen CMAS information from one of these carriers, please let us know.

As reported recently on AWARE, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in its Fifth EAS Report and Order prohibited the use of text-to-speech (TTS) technology when converting messages from the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) format to legacy EAS format for airing on broadcast stations and cable systems. This ban was to take effect on April 23, 2012. While we made note of the “Petition for Reconsideration” filed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asking FCC to restore EAS TTS use and the widespread support for that filing by the EAS community, we surmised that “the FCC does not typically move quickly on such matters and any change to the CAP EAS rules is not expected prior to the April 23, 2012 effective date”. Well much to AWARE’s delight, the FCC proved us wrong and in fact issued an Order on Reconsideration prior to April 23 to allow TTS use in EAS devices. From the EAS community – hats off to the Commission on this insightful decision.

This historically expeditious action by the Commission required a vote of Chairman Genachowski as well as the other two FCC Commissioners – and they and the FCC staff got it done! While the FCC in the Order stated that because FEMA filed their “Petition for Reconsideration” prior to the date that the Fifth R&O became law the FCC could not consider it an official Petition for Reconsideration, the Commission did still honor the spirit of the FEMA filing by stating “on our own motion we reconsider and revise section 11.56(a)(2) of our rules…” to allow the use of TTS technology in EAS equipment as described in the FCC-adopted EAS-CAP Industry Group (ECIG) Implementation Guide. Again the Commission is to be commended for finding a way to honor the wishes of the EAS community rather than playing hard ball on the technicalities of the timing of FEMA’s filing.

It should be noted that the FCC considers a final decision on the issue of TTS use in EAS to be deferred not closed, stating, “we hereby defer consideration of the ECIG Implementation Guide’s adoption of TTS software configured in EAS equipment to generate the audio portion of an EAS message, and thus neither require nor prohibit EAS Participants from following the ECIG Implementation Guide’s specification on use of TTS”. So the TTS issue is apparently to-be-continued.

The Order on Reconsideration does not become law until it is published in the Federal Register, which means there may be a window of uncertainty between the former effective date of the TTS ban, April 23, 2012, and the date that the new Order appears in the Federal Register and thus becomes law to nullify the TTS ban. AWARE has informal opinions from more than one well-placed individual that FCC enforcement action on TTS is unlikely during this lapse between the two FCC actions. Again, kudos to the Commission for a swift and contemplative decision regarding an issue of great importance to the success of Next Generation EAS.

As reported on FirstResponder.gov yesterday, research and development funding for the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) is  available through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T).  According to the article (quoted below), there are three main research areas in which S&T is interested: public response to alerts and warnings, ensuring access for diverse populations, and geo-targeting.

 Public Response (FRG.03): Research to better understand how the public will respond to alert and warning messages on mobile devices

Diverse Populations (FRG.04): Research to better understand how to ensure the same timely and effective access to alerts and warnings for diverse populations including persons with functional and access needs, transients/tourists, elderly/older, isolated/rural populations, institutional populations, and non-English speaking people

Geo-Targeting (FRG.05): Research to better determine when more granular geo-targeting is appropriate and how broadly targeting should be extended from the point of an incident as well as Identification, testing, and evaluation of technologies that provide the capability of more granular geo-targeting.

More information about this funding opportunity, including links to the LRBAA, application, research areas of strategic interest, submission requirements and processes, and evaluation criteria can be found on Grants.gov.

Interested applicants are strongly encouraged to submit white papers by May 24, 2012.

The AWARE Forum is excited to see the results of this research and development effort. Hopefully, research done will not only improve how CMAS is used in the near future, but also positively influence future iterations of this system. What kind of research do you think needs to be done?

Since the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) began its rolling deployment on April 7^th, no one has heard much from it. That changed last week, when handsets from Washington, DC to Portland, OR received CMAS messages on their phones around 3:00 PM EDT Wednesday (April 18) afternoon.

There has been talk of CMAS testing, and possibly the beginning of Required Monthly Tests (RMT), ever since the system’s first end-to-end test in New York Cityback in December. The messages received by many across the country this week may be the beginnings of this test. We at AWARE caught a glimpse of the message first-hand: one of our colleagues received this test message on his Android device.

CMAS Required Monthly Test, caught by AWARE staff

The message header is “RMT alert,” followed by an explanation that this is a CMAS test, and ending with the Common Alert Protocol (CAP) fields that will be populated in most CMAS messages. These tests are mandatory for carriers participating in CMAS, and are initiated by FEMA, who owns and operates CMAS. Details are listed out in the Code of Federal Regulations.

CMAS Testing Requirements

(a) Required monthly tests. Testing of the CMAS from the Federal Alert Gateway  to each Participating [Commercial Mobile Service] CMS Provider’s infrastructure shall be conducted monthly.

(1) A Participating CMS [Commercial Mobile Service] Provider’s Gateway shall support the ability to receive a required monthly test (RMT) message initiated by the Federal Alert Gateway Administrator.

(2) Participating CMS Providers shall schedule the distribution of the RMT to their CMAS coverage area over a 24 hour period commencing upon receipt of the RMT at the CMS Provider Gateway. Participating CMS Providers shall determine the method to distribute the RMTs, and may schedule over the 24 hour period the delivery of RMTs over geographic subsets of their coverage area to manage traffic loads and to accommodate maintenance windows.

(3) A Participating CMS Provider may forego an RMT if the RMT is pre-empted by actual alert traffic or if an unforeseen condition in the CMS Provider infrastructure precludes distribution of the RMT. A Participating CMS Provider Gateway shall indicate such an unforeseen condition by a response code to the Federal Alert Gateway.

(4) The RMT shall be initiated only by the Federal Alert Gateway Administrator using a defined test message. Real event codes or alert messages shall not be used for the CMAS RMT message.

(5) A Participating CMS Provider shall distribute an RMT within its CMAS coverage area within 24 hours of receipt by the CMS Provider Gateway unless pre-empted by actual alert traffic or unable due to an unforeseen condition.

(6) A Participating CMS Provider may provide mobile devices with the capability of receiving RMT messages.

It appears that in this instance the RMT went not only to test handsets, but to phones owned by members of the public. Activity on Twitter, Facebook and online tech forums suggests that people all over the country received these messages. Judging from the reactions, it seems that most were confused by the message and few knew what CMAS was. Some highlights are below. (While there were some particularly colorful posts expressing confusion, we’ve decided to keep AWARE a family-friendly site and have refrained from reposting).

Is anyone else getting random blank #CMAS alerts on their Verizon #iPhone? I just got a second in the matter of a few months.

Does anyone here know when #CMAS is really going to roll out? Everything I’ve seen says 2012 but has no real date. #SMEM

Hi do you know if that cmas alert was just Verizon folks or across the board? in any case it was national

Portland Bureau of Emergency Management in Oregon received the #CMAS test on a cell phone at noon PST. #SMEM

Just passed a hundred state patrols then got a CMAS alert on my phone #coincidence?

Does anyone get CMAS alerts on their phone? what is that? #confused is the world ending?

What in the world is the “CMAs Alert”

The AWARE Forum has learned that these tests are scheduled for the 3^rd Wednesday of each month at 1:00pm, ET. The RMT is designed to hit every capable phone in range of the test signal with a message.  The message will only be received and displayed with a CMAS capable mobile device that is on a CMAS capable Mobile Network Operator.  Whether or not the message is displayed will vary by handset and carrier.

Verizon’s CMAS  (also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts/WEA) FAQ’s address this.

If you are receiving test alerts, we thank you for your patience. The manufacturer of your device will soon release a silent, over the air fix to prevent further receipt of test alerts.

We’re excited to see that the system is sending messages out across the country and expect that these tests will provide FEMA, the FCC, wireless carriers and other stakeholders with valuable information. What do you think? Did you receive a message ? If so, what kind of phone do you have and what carrier do you use?

On April 14-19, 2012, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) held its annual show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the only facility large enough to accommodate the 100,000 attendees (attendance looked to be up from last year’s 92,708) and the 1600+ exhibitors.  The Emergency Alert System (EAS) was highlighted in an all-morning session on Wednesday, and several vendors were showing new EAS-related innovations.

The quick hits from the EAS session:

• Admiral Jamie Barnett will be leaving his post at FCC as Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau at the end of April.  The Acting Chief will be David Furth.
• Only 60% of EAS Participants reported their results to the FCC on the Nationwide EAS Test.  This reporting is required, and Tom Beers from the FCC said “enforcement action is very possible” against EAS Participants that haven’t reported their test results.  He said in order to check if the FCC has received your test results, EAS Participants can contact: Timothy.May [at] fcc.gov.  In addition, members of the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations (NASBA) that were in the audience said that NASBA would be willing to work with the state broadcasters associations to elicit responses from the errant broadcasters.
• Antwane Johnson from FEMA said that there would likely be follow-up nationwide EAS tests, but not in 2012.
• It was reported that the FEMA Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) is working closely with third party developers, such as Pandora, Google and AOL, to distribute IPAWS alerts.
• Over 3000 people from all 50 states have taken the IS-247 IPAWS online training course.
• There are currently 64 Primary Entry Point (PEP) stations, six more are under construction, and by the end of 2013 there will be 77 PEP stations in operation.  By the end of summer, all PEP stations will be receiving their audio via satellite which will improve the quality and reliability of audio delivery at the PEPs.
• The issue of cable override was brought up, the practice of cable systems interrupting local broadcaster video to air a generic cable system EAS message when the broadcaster may be carrying more detailed information.  While FCC rules allow cable systems to enter into agreements to not interrupt local broadcaster video, many of the current digital-based cable systems do not offer the cable operator the capability to exclude certain channels from an EAS message relay.  Tom Beers from the FCC said the Commission has the issue under consideration and they are listening.

On the exhibit floor…

• TFT Inc. was showing their new touch-screen EAS/CAP encoder/decoder, but it has not yet passed the required FEMA Conformance Assessment testing to be offered for sale.
• The HD Radio exhibit was showing their “Active Radio” feature, which displays the enhanced text messages of Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) EAS messages on the display of both FM and AM HD Radio receivers.  Yes, for the first time AM stations can now transmit text to receivers, using HD Radio.  Successful experiments have been conducted with 324-character messages transmitted on AM HD Radio stations.  Although HD Radio receivers that can display this Active Radio feature are just coming to market now, this is the time for broadcasters to talk with their EAS/CAP unit vendor about getting their EAS unit connected to the station HD Radio Exporter to have these emergency text messages available for these new receivers.
• The Mobile Digital TV pavilion had a demo of the “M-EAS” Mobile Emergency Alert System that relays IPAWS alerts to mobile DTV receivers.  This initiative was announced in a session at last year’s NAB Show, and this year’s show offered prototype receivers in action.  Of note is that FCC Chairman Genachowki said in his remarks that MetroPCS is rolling out mobile DTV to their handsets.

AWARE will stay abreast with these developing stories and provide updates as progress is made.  Were you at the NAB Show?  Did you see additional items of interest to AWARE readers?  Leave a reply comment below and spread the word.