(More on TIME.com: FCC 'PLAN' Would Alert Cellphone Users of Natural Disasters)
The alerts are not standard text messages, but instead messages sent on a different channel. According to an FCC statement, doing so “ensures that emergency alerts won't get stuck in highly congested user areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services.” It also means that you need a PLAN-capable phone to receive the messages.
If you have a qualifying mobile like the iPhone, you'll be able to receive three types of government alerts: messages issued by the President, alerts about imminent threats, and Amber alerts. You'll be able to unsubscribe from the threat and Amber alerts, but receiving Presidential alerts will be mandatory.
If history is any guide, however, you may not get any messages from 1600 Pennsylvania. Since the Emergency Alert System was created in 1963, it's never been activated, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11. Why?
The chairman of the FCC during the 9/11 attacks, Michael Powell, says that “The explosion of 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week media networks in some ways has proven to supplant those original conceptions of a senior leader's need to talk to the people.”
Given that it was Twitter, and the President's address, that recently broke the killing of Osama Bin Laden, you have to wonder whether the new service will be just as swiftly supplanted.
Source: techland.time.com