OMG 2RNAD0! FCC approves emergency texting system

Every Tuesday at noon in San Francisco, a loud siren goes off that you can hear from anywhere in the city. It's the weekly test of the city's public emergency alert system, designed to warn people about earthquakes, impending tsunamis, or Russian nukes on the way. But such old-school alarms may soon become a thing of the past, as the FCC has approved a plan to alert people about large-scale emergencies via cell phone and text message broadcast.

The plan calls for the FCC or a related agency to create the text messages and then send them along to cellular companies for rebroadcasting to subscribers. The cell phone service providers would have to choose to participate; it's not clear how compulsory "opting in" might be, but all four major national cellular companies have already stated they are likely to comply with the plan. Once that plan is finalized (and I'm sure there are a few months of red tape ahead), carriers will have 10 months to get their networks ready to handle the alerts.

What would comprise an emergency in the FCC's universe? It's strictly limited to three types of events: Disasters that "could jeopardize the health and safety of Americans" (namely terrorist attacks), natural disasters, and child abductions (including Amber alerts). Messages can be sent to subscribers in a single county, a state, or the whole country and will be limited to 90 characters in length.

CNN notes that the alert system has been in the works since Congress passed an act in 2006 mandating its creation. That's actually pretty quick in the world of the federal government, and there's no real technical hurdle preventing this from going into effect relatively quickly. While I doubt we'll have to worry about getting too many nuke warnings, expect to start getting buzzed with those Amber alerts before the end of 2009.

LINK: FCC approves emergency alert text-messaging system