24/09/2020
Cell Broadcast Service (CBS)
TRA was approached by the National Early Warning
Center for the purpose of introducing Cell Broadcast Service (CBS). The main
goal of this service is to enable broadcasting of warning and disaster related
information to the public promptly and without delay.
The provision of effective communication is one of
the most important duties of relevant government entities towards its citizens
and residents. An important component required to meet this duty is the ability
for authorities to communicate with the public before, during and after the
emergency. Therefore, it is required to have effective, high quality
communication methods and systems to meet this need.
TRA directed mobile telecom service operators to
introduce the suitable solution for a warning system. Cell Broadcast Service
(CBS) was the selected solution due to high reachability, high speed and less
dependencies. The CBS platform
was developed according to national requirements for all the three current
technologies: 4G, 3G and 2G and also integrated the same with the government
warning system and thus the platform was developed accordingly.
TRA
and the licensees successfully conducted the initial test with all expected
scenarios within a certain geographical area. This is while taking into
consideration that the sound of this service is unique even if the mobile phone
is in silent mode.
The
licensees are expected to integrate with the early warning center through ITU
standard Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). CAP is an XML-based data format for exchanging public warnings and emergencies between alerting
technologies. CAP allows a warning message to be consistently disseminated
simultaneously over many warning systems to many applications
In
order to ensure availability of the CBS features in the mobile handsets in both
the existing available in the Omani market as well as the future coming
handsets to the Omani market, TRA agreed with the National Early Warning Center
on the specifications required to enable the CBS on the handsets according to
international standards. These were shared with most of handsets vendors
requesting them to enable all the handsets with these specifications by June
2020.
