[sbe-eas] FCC Chairwoman requests info on multi-lingual WEA

[Sean Donelan]

The Chairwoman sent letters to the nation's nine largest providers of 
Wireless Emergency Alerts seeking information on how these alerts can 
start to support more languages beyond English and Spanish.

https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairwoman-seeks-information-multilingual-wireless-emergency-alerts


EU-Alert, the European version of WEA, supports a national "primary" 
language in each country and alternate languages (usually English).

Japan's goal is to support 5 major languages for alerts Japanese, English, 
Mandarin, Korean and Portuguese.

Canada Alert Ready is required to support both English and French for 
alerts.

The biggest challange in most countries Alerting Authority capabilities to 
author alerts in multiple languages. While the GSM standards WEA uses can 
render messages using different character sets, international tourists 
with mobile phones from around the world receive alerts, end-to-end 
testing often look like gibberish.

During the Olympics every 2 to 4 years is a great example of confusing 
alert messages on mobile phones.