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Custom Amber Alerts come to cell phones

Mobile phone users can sign up to be notified when alerts go out in specific regions. Florida uses a statewide system.

By JEAN HELLER
Published May 18, 2005

Within hours after sheriff's deputies found three people dead and two children missing from a Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, home Monday evening, an Amber Alert for the children found its way to ordinary citizens' cell phones all over the state.

It was a quick test for a system that became active only Tuesday morning, a national network for broadcasting Amber Alerts to cell phones in the regions where children have disappeared. The Idaho children were still missing Tuesday night. The network potentially will enlist thousands, and in some cases millions, of eyes in the search for abducted children.

"There it is, right there," said Chuck Hamby, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless when he checked his computer for Amber Alerts in Idaho. "It got out to everyone signed up out there. It makes me really proud."

Law enforcement officials say the first three hours after a child's disappearance are the most critical to finding the child alive and unharmed. But unless average people catch Amber Alerts on radio or television, or see them on dynamic message signs along some interstate highways, they don't know who or what to watch for.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children took a cellular-telephone alert plan to CTIA, the wireless industry's international association, and enlisted its members' cooperation.

All of the nation's major wireless providers, Alltell, Cingular Wireless, Dobson Communications, Nextel Communications, RCC/Unicel, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless went along, and a number of regional carriers said they would sign on as they could.

"Right now that gives us the potential for 182-million cell phones, about 90 percent of all the cell phones in the country," said Erin McGee, spokeswoman for CTIA.

Tampa-based Syniverse Technologies, a specialist in messaging technologies, won the contract to develop the platform to distribute Amber Alerts.

Spokeswoman Helen Harris said the hardware, software and support services donated by Syniverse and its partners, including Hewlett Packard and Oracle, are valued at $9-million.

Anyone with a cellular telephone tied to a wireless provider on the list can sign up to get the alerts either on the provider's Web site or at www.wirelessamberalerts.org The Web page was difficult to access on Tuesday because so many people were trying to log on.

Those signing up can pick as many as five ZIP codes, and any Amber Alert issued within those areas will come through to the cell phones. Florida has a statewide Amber Alert system, so any alert issued anywhere in the state will be broadcast to Florida phones.

When law enforcement confirms an abduction, it notifies the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which notifies Syniverse. Syniverse sends the message to wireless providers, who broadcast it to cellular phones in the area of the abduction.

If suspects in the abduction or the children being sought are spotted outside the immediate alert area, additional alerts will be sent.

There are 200 to 250 Amber Alerts issued nationwide each year. With cell phones receiving alerts only for their immediate areas, no one will be overwhelmed.

"It's amazing how this came to be," said Hamby. "All the providers have their competitive issues - we're the biggest, we're the best, we've got the best coverage. But this was a totally cooperative venture all the way."

[Last modified May 18, 2005, 00:49:11]