Saturday,  May 19, 2012 • Vol. 12--No. 310 • 3 of 41 •  Other Editions

(Continued from page 2)

• The National Weather Service in Aberdeen will start utilizing this by pushing extreme weather warnings over the system in June 2012.
• Tornado warnings, flash flood warnings and several other high-end warnings will go direct to wireless users in an affected county automatically if their device is compatible.
• While the WEA sounds great, there are many limitations at the present time.
• For one thing, not all wireless carriers will participate in this program as it is voluntary. According to the FCC, South Dakota companies not electing to participate in the CMAS program include James Valley Wireless of Groton, Airwave Wirelsss, Kimball; Alliance Communications, Garretson; Communications Enterprises, Woonsocket; Derrick Bulawa, Steele; G.W. Wireless, Wall and Bison; Golden West Tel-Tech, Rapid City; Kennebec Telephone, Kennebec; Santel Communications, Woonsocket; Venture Wireless, Highmore; and West River Cooperative, Bison.
•  Even among the major wireless carriers, there are a limited number of devices that can receive these messages.
• AT&T currently supports Samsung Galaxy SII (SGH-i777), Samsung Captivate Glide (SGH-i927), Motorola Atrix 2 (mb865)
More CMAS devices will follow throughout 2012. AT&T is working to certify and deploy CMAS service to as many devices as possible, as quickly as possible. A software update may be needed to enable these devices for CMAS.
• The
Capable devices on Verizon Wireless include Droid X by Motorola, Droid 2™ by Motorola, Droid 2 Global, Droid Pro by Motorola, Droid RAZR by Motorola, Droid RAZR MAXX by Motorola, Motorola Bionic LTE by Motorola, LG Cosmos™ 2, LG Revere™, LG Enlighten™, Lucid™ by LG, Verizon Jest 2, Samsung Convoy™ 2.

(Continued on page 4)

© 2012 Groton Daily Independent • To send correspondence, click here.