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News Releases
2007
NTT DoCoMo and KDDI Develop Platform for Immediate Notification of Emergency Earthquake Alerts

NTT DoCoMo
KDDI Corporation

2007/05/30

NTT DoCoMo and KDDI announced today that they will each develop a platform permitting instant delivery of emergency earthquake alerts [1] from Japan's Meteorological Agency to cellular phones within specified regions.

Existing cellphone messaging systems, such as i-mode® mail and e-mail are prone to significant lags and systemwide congestion when distributing large-scale simultaneous messages. The new system will avoid these problems, making it possible to transmit emergency alerts to all cellphones [2] within an affected area immediately.

This technology will allow cellular users to quickly receive emergency earthquake alerts from the Meteorological Agency, and is expected to reduce casualties resulting from earthquakes.

DoCoMo and KDDI are working to roll out this technology in the near future to benefit public safety.

[1]  Emergency earthquake alert: Immediately following an earthquake, readings from seismometers near the quake's epicenter are analyzed, the epicenter location and quake magnitude are estimated, and in the case of strong quakes (intensity 4 or higher), notifications are sent out across the affected region as quickly as possible.
[2]  New cellphones will be required for compatibility with this service.

* i-mode is a registered trademark of NTT DoCoMo.

News Releases > 2007
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