The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai today commended ATIS for its efforts to improve the geographic accuracy of Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs). This announcement was made in response to ATIS’ completion of a new White Paper on the Impacts of Cell Selection for WEA Geo-Targeting.

This report was developed at the FCC’s request. It presents a detailed explanation, accompanied by illustrations, of the broadcast characteristics and other factors that drive the results of the cell/sector selection by the Commercial Mobile Service Providers when building the broadcast for a given alert. Due to the sensitive nature of the content, this white paper is not being posted publicly. It has, however, been shared with industry stakeholder associations.

The white paper is part of a robust standardization effort around WEAs that ATIS is leading. ATIS’ Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee (WTSC) continues to address new and emerging issues related to WEA. In October 2020, ATIS WTSC agreed to work on the development of WEA best practices at the request of the FCC Chairman. This work is expected to be completed in 2Q2021.