Fort Myers, Fla. and Elizabethtown, Ky.—Aug. 8, 2017— Interop Technologies™, a specialist in advanced communication networks and managed services, today announced that Bluegrass Cellular, a community-focused wireless company serving central Kentucky, will deploy enhanced Wireless Emergency Alerts (eWEA) for their CDMA network from the Interop Cloud™. Using Interop's cloud-hosted eWEA solution, operators on any network can quickly provide their subscribers with alerts based on the latest Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requirements.
Enhancements outlined by the FCC for WEA include increasing character limits from 90 to up to 360 characters on 4G-LTE and future networks and devices, support for Spanish-language alerts, improved geo-targeting for precise message delivery, and enabling phone numbers and URLs to be embedded in alerts to provide additional information. The addition of a new class of alerts called Public Safety messages is also included in the FCC update. Currently, WEA alerts only support imminent threats, AMBER Alerts, and Presidential Messages. The new category will allow public safety officials to use the eWEA system to send messages that are important for public safety, but don’t meet the “imminent threat” criteria. The cloud-hosted eWEA solution provided by Interop supports operators on CDMA, GSM, UMTS and LTE networks.
“At Bluegrass Cellular, our customers are our neighbors. Anything we can do to keep them safe and informed is a top priority,” said Barry Nothstine, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Bluegrass Cellular. “And with Interop’s hosted eWEA, Bluegrass can quickly and cost effectively implement the new FCC rules, ensuring our subscribers are made aware of public safety information as soon as possible.”
“As a leader in cloud-hosted emergency services solutions, it’s important to us that our customers are able to quickly and efficiently meet the new FCC and FEMA requirements for emergency wireless alerts,” said Josh Wigginton, Staff Vice President of Product Management at Interop Technologies. “We believe in continually enhancing all our solutions as technology evolves to ensure that our customer’s feel secure about their future.”
About Bluegrass Cellular
Bluegrass Cellular (www.bluegrasscellular.com) operates in 37 counties in Kentucky and one county in Indiana. In business for more than 28 years, Bluegrass has 20 company-owned retail locations and 34 authorized agent stores. A wireless pioneer, Bluegrass was the first to offer digital cellular service to central Kentucky in 1998. Five local organizations started Bluegrass Cellular and continue as sole owners today: Brandenburg Telephone Co., South Central Rural Telephone Co., North Central Rural Telephone Co., Duo County Telephone Co., and Logan Telephone Co. Bluegrass offers quality voice and data services, as well as new technologies to its customers.
