T-Mobile announced Wednesday that, for the first time in the United States, it has transmitted a wireless emergency alert (WEA) using satellites.
The system’s initial test took place on September 5 when a simulated evacuation alert was transmitted into low Earth orbit where it was picked up by a Starlink satellite and retransmitted across a set geographic area to T-mobile smartphones. Per the company, this new system, “opens up the 500,000 square miles of lightly populated, mountainous and/or uninhabitable land across the country to critical, life-saving emergency alerts.”
T-Mobile points to Northern California’s deadly Camp Fires in 2018, which burned more than 150,000 acres, killed 86 people, and forced the evacuation of 52,000 more. Folks living off-grid in the region had no access to emergency alerts due to the lack of mobile coverage (not to mention the 17 cell towers burned in the fire that burned as well) and were therefore more at risk of not evacuating in time. Had T-Mobile’s WEA system been in service then, far more people could have been alerted wirelessly to the fire’s approach.
The company does not yet have a firm release date for the WEA system. T-Mobile says that Starlink will be launching more of its micro-satellite constellation in the coming months, and “as that happens, T-Mobile intends to beta test the service before launching it commercially.”
T-Mobile CEO Mike Siever said in a press release, “This is one of those days […] 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.” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk previously said that “SpaceX Starlink will provide emergency services access for mobile phones for people in distress for free,” but considering all the other things Musk has promised over the years, it’s not clear if that will actually happen.
Source: PR Newswire
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