[justin.culp]

Options>>advanced options>>cell broadcasting.

Mine is currently set to 'off'. What is this?

This has been posted elsewhere with no responces.

[Number13]

You gotta love Google...

Cell broadcasting

Cell broadcasting is an existing, though rarely used, function of cellular networks and is defined by the official standardisation bodies such as GSM MoU, (GSM 03.49)UMTS, 3GPP/3GPP2 and IS95CDMA.

Cell broadcasting allows text messages to be broadcast to all mobile handsets in a given geographical area. This area can range from the area covered by a single cell to the whole network. Because cell broadcast works by targeting particular cells no knowledge of mobile telephone numbers is required, unlike bulk SMS. Also cell broadcasting places a very low load on the network, a cell broadcast to every subscriber on the network is equivalent to sending an SMS message to a single phone. Network loading problems can cause severe problems in emergency situations when network usage is likely to be very high anyway and in these circumstances SMS messages can be delayed for hours or days or even lost altogether.

The cell broadcast technology provides for 64000 broadcast channels so that different types of message (severe weather, terrorist, missing child etc) could be broadcast on different channels. Not every subscriber would necessarily receive all the channels and hence all the messages. Channels can be activated from the handset or remotely by the network. Ideally certain channels would be allocated for certain message types and these would be standardised globally so that travellers would receive alerts wherever they happen to be.

[justin.culp]

Appreciate the response. When I'm in this site and I can't find something BB related, I figure it doesn't exist! This site is excellent.

[smjoshi]

Originally Posted by Number13

You gotta love Google...

Cell broadcasting

Cell broadcasting is an existing, though rarely used, function of cellular networks and is defined by the official standardisation bodies such as GSM MoU, (GSM 03.49)UMTS, 3GPP/3GPP2 and IS95CDMA.

Cell broadcasting allows text messages to be broadcast to all mobile handsets in a given geographical area. This area can range from the area covered by a single cell to the whole network. Because cell broadcast works by targeting particular cells no knowledge of mobile telephone numbers is required, unlike bulk SMS. Also cell broadcasting places a very low load on the network, a cell broadcast to every subscriber on the network is equivalent to sending an SMS message to a single phone. Network loading problems can cause severe problems in emergency situations when network usage is likely to be very high anyway and in these circumstances SMS messages can be delayed for hours or days or even lost altogether.

The cell broadcast technology provides for 64000 broadcast channels so that different types of message (severe weather, terrorist, missing child etc) could be broadcast on different channels. Not every subscriber would necessarily receive all the channels and hence all the messages. Channels can be activated from the handset or remotely by the network. Ideally certain channels would be allocated for certain message types and these would be standardised globally so that travellers would receive alerts wherever they happen to be.

Number13 - Thanks. How does one turn this feature on, on a BB8700? There is an option under Settings -> Advanced Options -> Cell Broadcast. I turned the "Cell Broadcast Service" On (it was off) and addeded a Channel (there were no channels defined). However nothing happens i.e. I receive no messages. I know that the local service provider uses the Cell Broadcast mechanism to continuously transmit the name/location of the cell tower that I am connected to. Because on a regular Nokia cell phone, I am able to get this information: On turning the "Cell Broadcast" on, the phone starts displaying the name/location of the tower right in the middle of the phone screen. How does one get that on the Blackberry!!

[toddz]

You would have to know the exact channel that this information is being broadcast on and program it into the settings. However, if you do add this channel, I don't think that it would have the desired effect. I beleive that the Nokia implementation grabs the tower information and uses it as a tag on the screen. I don't think the BlackBerry implementation is the same.

toddz