Respond to peer response below
The Commercial Mobile Alert System is designed to all geo-targeted alerts and warning to mobile phones, without subscriber cost. In my opinion some advantages to the Commercial Mobile Alert System are that it does not cost any subscriber money to receive these alerts. Mobile alerts are available in national, state, local, and Tribal forms. A CMAS is sent to cell towers, so anything connected to that tower will receive the alert. The range that this system has been able to mass is almost nationwide I believe. To cover that much space and give all citizens the chance to be alerted of a danger or event is crucial. The system can even be limited down to alerting just one county opposed to alerting the entire nation that Leon County is in danger of a hurricane. People in Illinois do not need to know that. I believe that the biggest advantage to the Commercial Mobile Alert System is that it works through cell towers and sends a message to all devices connected to that tower. That could be a phone, iPad, laptop, television, etc. A person can be on any one of those devices and they would be notified of an emergency alert. It is the most efficient way to get alerts and warnings out to the public because almost everyone has a phone on them at all times. The majority of United States homes has either a television or a laptop or both, and typically one or the other is in use so that message can be seen. Some disadvantages to CMAS are that only CMAS capable phones can receive these messages – which can include presidential alerts, imminent threat alerts, and AMBER alerts. Another disadvantage is that people can opt out of imminent threat alerts and AMBER alerts. I think that if an alert is sent out to notify the population of a threat, the entire population should be made aware of it. Only 90 characters are allowed for the alert, and no images or hyperlinks can be added in the message. I believe that the biggest disadvantage to this system is that only 90 characters are allowed per alert. 90 characters is about the equivalent of two short sentences. 90 characters is not enough space for a concise and specific enough message to be sent out to mass populations. There needs to be more information within a lot of public alerts other than to just take shelter or that there is a threat in the area. Humans need more information than that or worry sets in. Or maybe the opposite sets in and we as a population ignore the message because we may not think that the alert is dangerous enough or we see the same alerts over and over and are never involved in any dangerous situations. With more than just 90 characters in an alert, people would know what the alert is for, how dangerous of a situation it is, where might be the closest location to take shelter, and much more.
