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Cell broadcast is a service provided by mobile operators. When normal SMS messages are send from a mobile to another mobile, cell broadcast messages are send from mobile or a system to all mobiles under a cell or a tower. Broadcast messages can reach all the mobiles under a tower or the entire country in a matter or seconds. The technology allows to send messages to all mobiles with in a set of towers. In a cellular network 64000 broadcast channels are possible there by enabling many services that uses the basic broadcast technology.
Uses of cell broadcast technology
Location based services
The technology allows to send messages to a single selected tower or a group of towers. That means messages can be sent location specific. This opens up many service areas. For eg :- if some mobile operator is conducting a free mobile check up camp at some place he can use the broadcasting technology to inform all the mobile users in that location by sending a broadcast message to the tower covering that location.
Emergency alerts
In case of a emergency at some place, all the mobile users in that place can be alerted in matter of seconds. Think of a situation where tsunami warnings send out to all mobile users 1 hour earlier, as soon as the satellites pick up the tsunami signals. Such an alert service can save many lives. The service can also be used to alert people when communal tension breaks out in some parts. The advantage is that the alerts can be confined to a region.
Traffic Alerts
In cities with heavy traffic, the drivers can be alerted of traffic blocks and accidents as they happen so that they can change their route and avoid traffic congestion. This system can replace traffic radios.
Operator information
The mobile operator can make use of the cell broadcasting technology very efficiently. He can send out tarrif changes, advertisments, new service announcements etc via cell broadcasting. Sending out individual SMS uses network bandwidth, but broadcast messages dont consume any bandwidth.
The Technology
Mobile towers are under the contorl of Base station controllers or BSCs. Broadcast is possible only via BSCs. CBC or a cell broadcast center is connected to every BSC in a mobile network to achieve broadcasting. When the user selectes an area to broadcast a message, the CBC converts that area into a set of BSCs and mobile towers. CBC also scheduels messages for broadcast. The CBC is the heart of the cell broadcasting system and and acts as the server for all external message broadcasting entities. Unlike SMS, broadcast message is an unconfirmed push service. There is no delivery report for the sender to confirm that everyone has recieved the message.
To recieve a broadcast message the mobile subsciber must tune into that broadcast channel. Most modern mobiles are equipped with this technology and the hadsets will be preactivated to recieve broadcast messages. A single broadcast message can contain upto 1395 characters, and equivalent of 8 normal SMS messages. Normal SMS messages uses the signalling channel to send and receive SMS, thats the reason why sometimes SMS networks gets jammed and messages gets lost. But broadcast messages have a dedicated channel of their own and they in no way add any load to the existing network.
Advantages
- Location sensitive
- Fast and efficient message delivery
- No additional network traffic
- Real time communication (less than 5 sec delivery time)
- Support binary messages (ringtones, logos, OTA configurations)
- No storage required
- No need to know the telephone numbers of the mobiles
Some services powered using cell broadcast technology
- Some arab countries send prayer timings as broadcast messages to its citizens
- Send out stock quotes
- Mobile Marketing
- Railway information service
- Traffic alerts
- Announcements at large events
- Emergency notification
The future
Right now only text and binary messages can be broadcasted. But as 3G phone become more and more popular 3G broadcast services will be available. Streaming audio and video will be available on broadcast channels. Those kind of technologies will ensure that a mobile user has access to all the radio and TV channels on his mobile phone itself.
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14 comments ↓
I heard in India there is 2.5G only and no 3G… well thats an article read, a year back..not sure about its advancements now..well what about 4G???
Hello Kenney & all,
I am formulating a plan of action for a client company. SMS-CB may be a great solution to some of the problems we have encountered when attempting to form groups of users. Our system would be required to send an SMS-CB every 15 seconds during a six hour time period daily. The message would be different for each of these 15 second intervals and consist of approximately 256 bytes.
Does anyone know if this is feasible and if so what costs would be involved from the carrier(s)?
Sincerely,
Mark Henry
and if you are so unlucky that you have phone from USA then forget about it, they didn’t invented such things yet and cell broadcasts don’t work at all (i didn’t believed at first, then i saw some proofs and wikipedia confirmed it completely)
on the bottom line operators can generate broadcast without the depending on handset functionality. basically this is achieved by the old-day workaround of providing a list of subscribers retrieved by a BC manager to the SMS server which works it down in batch mode. the messages can be tuned to specific to appear as regular or specific SMS messages. another advantage of this approach is that the sender actually can get acknowledgement of delivery.
@ Mark Henry:
Hi,
Take a look at sasken (dot) com. Or you could get in touch with me at kaizer (dot) billimoria (at) sasken (dot) com.
Cheers,
Kaizer
hi
i’m located in india. i wanted to know how location information is made available on mobile phones thro’ cell broadcast messaeges. what are the AT commands required to obtain this information.
regards
kevin
Right now the operators have not opened up this information to the public due to privacy issues. Also Its not available via AT commands.
Cell Broadcast can serve some useful purposes, as you stated, but it’s strength is also its weaknesses. Because it can broadcast a message to many users at once, it is ideal for public service announcements, such as Tsunami warnings, as you state. However, the power of the technology also means that, were it open to advertisers and the like, that it would provide yet another addition to the information overload that we all face. Were it no more than a constant barrage of unimportant messages, the ability to communicate Tsunami warnings becomes lost in a cacophony of marketing messages.
To maintain its true power, CB should be held in reserve for very specific uses and not lumped in with the rest of the “push” technology that is available. Users already have ways to receive traffic and weather notifications and alerts. The power of a public warning system is that is overrides or usurps other forms of communication in order to get the message to the public. If CB were nothing more than another weather/traffic/stockmarket/politics/religion radio, the emergency notification would still fail to reach the thousands of users who choose to tune out the noise.
Preserve CB for emergency broadcasts and let the rest of the new technologies pick up everything else. The carriers and the content providers have already negotiated the money…the consumers pay the costs in the end anyway. Offering yet another way to blast people with their data is only going to squash the potential of CB to provide a valuable public service.
i want to know how to make money becoming a value added service provider,whats the mode of transaction ,is it possible for me to become a value added service provider.
i want to start my own website ,please tell me wheather it helps me or not.
I wondering too , how to get cell site name on phone display by at command. thank.
[…] a mobile to another mobile, … traffic Alerts. In cities with heavy traffic, the drivers can be …http://www.kenneyjacob.com/2007/05/06/cell-broadcast/Traffic.com HelpWhat are the City Codes that the text messaging SMS service uses? Can you send me […]
I would want to know if cellbroadcasts are the same as cell info display and also the percentage of phones on the market that can accept the broadcasts.
Dear Sir,
I want to know how I can connect to BSC with TCP/IP for send Packets ( with formtted 03.49) ?
that is standard TCP/IP ?
or
that ’s OSI stack ? (if this is yes, how I can use OSI stack in windows or Linux?)
many thanks
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