Urgent News Flash System Planned
KDDI announced yesterday that they are working with rival operator NTT DoCoMo and the Meteorological Agency to develop a platform which will deliver urgent earthquake “news flash” information to cell phones. According to the limited details made available it seems like they are planning to target users only in the immediate area where an earthquake is expected to hit.
The urgent earthquake news flash system is based on observational data, captured with a seismograph immediately after the occurrence of an earthquake, which analyzes the scale of the hypocenter and estimated magnitude. Regions where a strong (4 or more) seismic intensity is expected based on this data will be informed as quickly as possible.
It does sound very much like they are planning to use an alternative delivery system than email and the service will be part of new handsets expected to be launched in the future. Maybe they will build a dedicated alarm warning system into this new bird.