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IBM is developing a type of memory that it says could one day be faster and more reliable than today's hard drives and flash memory.

Called “racetrack,” it is a solid-state memory that aims to combine the best attributes of flash, like having no moving parts, and the low cost of hard drives for an inexpensive form of nonvolatile memory that will be stable and durable, said Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow.

Racetrack memory stores information in thousands of atoms in magnetic nanowires. Without the atoms moving, an electrical charge causes data to move swiftly along a U-shaped pipe that allows data to be read and written in less than a nanosecond, Parkin said. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second and commonly used to measure access time to RAM.

The memory reads 16 bits of data through one transistor, so it reads and writes information 100,000 times faster than flash memory, Parkin said.

“In flash memory and hard drives, one transistor can access 1 bit, or with flash, maybe 2 or possibly even 4 bits, that's it. We are going to use… a transistor to access many bits of information.”

Racetrack is still in its early days. The concept was proposed four or five years ago, Parkin said, and IBM hopes to be able to provide terabytes worth of storage from such devices in a few years.

“It will take two to four years to build a prototype in which we build these reading-and-writing elements on a nanoscopic scale. In four years we can perhaps demonstrate it works and then manufacture it,” Parkin said.

Racetrack memory has no moving parts, it is “virtually unbreakable” and will never wear out, unlike flash drives, which could wear out after 10,000 read-and-write cycles, Parkin said. He likened the U-shaped design of horizontal pipes to a racetrack.

The memory keeps atoms constant, making it more durable than hard drives or flash. “Whenever you start to move atoms you have problems and devices wear out from fatigue after a time,” Parkin said.

Racetrack memory's storage capacity is similar to flash's and may soon exceed hard-drive capacities, Parkin said.

Hard disks rotate to access information, while racetrack memory uses an electrical charge to read and write data, so it also uses less electricity, he said.

It will be inexpensive to manufacture because fewer transistors will be required and each memory chip will hold thousands of nanowires in a small footprint, Parkin said.

The premise behind racetrack memory is spintronics, a technology that manipulates the charge and spin properties of electrons. Using spintronics, hard-drive makers have developed drives that read data from a microscopically small area.

Parkin is widely noted for his work on spintronics and helping double the density of hard drives every year. Scientists Albert Fert, of France, and Peter Grunberg, of Germany, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2007 for their spintronics research.

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place.

“We find this to be a very advantageous situation for Google,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said Thursday. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google.”

Yahoo signaled it is bracing for a protracted battle late Wednesday when an announcement and a media leak provided a glimpse at its labyrinthine search for alternatives to Microsoft’s bid of more than $40 billion.

The options include an experimental advertising alliance with Google that could lead to a broader partnership and, according to published reports, a combination with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.

As part of the AOL deal, Time Warner would get a roughly 20 percent stake in the merged entity in return for a substantial sum of cash that would help Yahoo buy back some of its stock at a price well above Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $31 per share.

“This is the first time that we have seen real feasible alternatives that could derail the Microsoft deal,” said analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Other analysts doubt Yahoo will succeed in thwarting Microsoft but believe it could force the world’s largest software maker to raise its offer as high as $35 per share, or about $50 billion.

For its part, Microsoft has indicated that it may lower its offer if Yahoo doesn’t accept the current bid by April 26.

But Microsoft made that threat before the details about Yahoo’s alternatives with Google and AOL emerged.

Although Microsoft has plenty of money to up the ante on its own, the Redmond, Wash.-based company may draw upon another deep pocket — Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Under this reported scenario, News Corp. would contribute the Internet’s top social network, MySpace.com, and some cash in a Yahoo takeover. The proposed deal would put three of the Web’s most popular sites — Yahoo, MySpace and Microsoft’s MSN — under the same umbrella.

In another ironic twist, Google could benefit if Microsoft and News Corp. buy Yahoo because it already has a long-term contract to show ads on MySpace.

Microsoft, Time Warner and News Corp. all declined to comment Thursday. A Yahoo representative didn’t respond to inquiries about the AOL deal. Google and Yahoo announced their advertising test Wednesday.

Investors seemed to welcome the latest developments. Yahoo shares rose 82 cents to $28.59 while Microsoft shares gained 22 cents to close at $29.11. The stocks of Google and Time Warner also moved up, while News Corp.’s Class A shares dipped 5 cents to $18.89.

The reported negotiations to bring together some of the world’s largest Web sites underscores the Internet’s maturation as a business sector. As consumers spend more time online, the smart money is following them — and now there’s a mad scramble to latch on to the prime properties in this promised land of future profit.

“The most likely outcome here is that a few players will become more and more dominant on the Internet,” said James Owers, a Georgia State University professor specializing in media and corporate finance.

The stakes are so high that News Corp. and AOL might decide to join forces if their latest negotiations with Microsoft and Yahoo don’t pan out, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a Thursday note to investors.

Google has emerged as the Internet’s most profitable company so far, primarily by showing relevant text-based ad links alongside the billions of search results that it churns out each month.

Propelled its success in search, Google built up a vast computer network that hosts a wide range of free services — many of which threaten to make Microsoft’s software less vital to consumers and businesses.

Microsoft believes Yahoo’s franchise will give it more weapons to retaliate against Google and reverse the losses that have plagued its online division.

But it’s looking less likely that Microsoft will be able to realize its goal of completing the Yahoo deal by the end of this year.

If Yahoo continues to resist, Microsoft probably will have to take its bid directly to shareholders — an acrimonious process that is typically settled at the target company’s annual meeting. Yahoo doesn’t have to hold its annual meeting until July 12.

And a deal done that late in the year isn’t likely to emerge from antitrust regulators’ purview until 2009, according to experts.

Yahoo may be able to rally support from its shareholders by pointing to the possibility of a long-term partnership with Google, which some analysts believe could boost Yahoo’s cash flow by 25 percent to 35 percent.

Google, too, could make more money from the alliance. But Lindsay doubts that’s the search leader’s main incentive for the tests.

“Anything that Google can do to keep Yahoo from going to Microsoft is good for Google,” Lindsay said.

If Yahoo decided turned over all its search-driven advertising to Google, it would face intense regulatory scrutiny that would be difficult to overcome, analysts predicted. Google controls 59 percent of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 22 percent and Microsoft at 10 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.

For now, Yahoo is allowing Google to show advertising links alongside no more than 3 percent of its U.S. search results and only for two weeks.

Microsoft already has signaled that it will strenuously object to antitrust regulators if Google sells search ads for Yahoo on a full-time basis. But a regulatory review might hurt Microsoft more than Google, Lindsay said, because it could mean waiting even longer to own Yahoo.

If Microsoft is able to pull off the Yahoo takeover, melding the two organizations will be difficult, especially if the deal is hostile or includes a third party like News Corp.

“The more complicated a deal gets, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy all parties,” Brown said. “And the more complicated the (post-deal) integration gets, the more it favors Google.”

___

AP Business Writer Seth Sutel in New York contributed to this story.

San Francisco - With energy efficiency and environmental issues of growing concern, Sun is preparing to tune its servers to be more environmentally friendly by introducing power management capabilities.

Speaking about the future of the datacenter at the Sun Labs Open House event in Menlo Park, Calif., Subodh Bapat, of the Sun eco responsibility office, talked about energy-efficient improvements planned for Sun servers as well as steps Sun and others are taking to make their datacenters more environmentally friendly.

Sun plans to introduce the notion of power-managed states, in which future servers will respond to a user's internal energy policies. For example, a 1 kilowatt server might be tuned to run at only 500 watts, and the server figures out how to run under that constraint, Bapat said.

“Today, our servers don't do that. They burn as much power as they possibly can,” he said.

Power management also will be offered for memory components, chips, disk drives, and fans via intelligent firmware that will calibrate power. There will be states like idle and sleep states.

“We're basically going to allow customers to express policies,” ranging from run as fast as possible and get the job done in as little time as is needed to take longer but burn fewer watts, said Bapat.

Datacenters, Bapat said, are undergoing substantial growth right now after what had been a down period. “About five years ago, you could buy datacenter space for really pennies on the dollar. Today, datacenters are premium real estate,” said Bapat.

But there are issues with heat generation and whether local electric utilities can supply enough power for these datacenters. The centers are being configured such that they have hot and cold regions abutting each other. “That's not a very efficient way to operate a data center,” because power needs to be supplied everywhere,” Bapat said.

Sun at its Santa Clara, Calif. facilities organized server racks into enclosed pods into a central aisle; hot air is then pumped directly into the air conditioning unit. Containment of hot and cold aisles is among the moves that can be made.

Other suggestions include running datacenters at off-peak hours for activities such as batch jobs and even siphoning off the cheaper nighttime megawatts during the night to freeze water. During the day, air conditioning use is cut by running the hot air off the ice.

Another example cited was having ambient air run through a network of pipes. The air comes out at 65 degrees. “People are doing that to essentially get free cooling and put that in the datacenter,” Bapat said.

Bapat also cited another unusual example. A university with a datacenter and a sewage treatment plant was expending 2 to 4 megawatts of power to cool down water that had heated up to 98 degrees in the data center and another 2 megawatts to heat up water to 98 degrees at the sewage treatment plant. This was an ideal temperature at which algae can break down sewage. So, the user site just coupled the two, funneling the heated water from the datacenter over to the sewage treatment plant, said Bapat

WASHINGTON - Stolen and sensitive U.S. military equipment, including fighter jet parts wanted by Iran and nuclear biological protective gear, has been available to the highest bidder on popular Internet sales sites, according to congressional investigators.

Using undercover identities, investigators purchased a dozen defense-related items on the auction site eBay and the online network Craigslist from January 2007 through last month and received the items “no questions asked.”

The Defense Department regards much of the stolen equipment to be on the U.S. Munitions List, meaning there are restrictions on their overseas sales, the Government Accountability Office said Thursday.

The equipment could land in international brokers’ hands or be transferred overseas, said the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm.

“Many of the sensitive items we purchased could have been used directly against our troops and allies, or reverse engineered to develop counter measures or equivalent technologies,” investigators said in their report.

Among the items purchased include two components from F-14 fighter jets, bought from separate buyers on eBay. The warplanes, now retired by the military, could easily be purchased and transferred to the Iranian military, which is seeking its components, the report said. Investigators couldn’t determine where the sellers had obtained the F-14 parts.

They also purchased from a Craigslist seller a used Nuclear Biological Chemical protective suit, other protective accessories as well as an unused chemical-biological canister, which contained the mask filter used to guard against warfare agents. The property was likely stolen from the Defense Department, the report said.

Investigators also purchased military stolen goods that were sold for personal profit. The Defense Department regards sale of certain items issued to military personnel, such as body armor, theft of government property, the report said.

“Although not all of the stolen property items available on eBay and Craigslist were sensitive, each item was purchased with taxpayer money and represents a waste of resources,” investigators said.

The Army recognizes that the U.S. military has had “property accountability and visibility challenges,” said Sarah H. Finnicum, director of supply at the Office of Deputy Chief of Staff for the Army, in testimony to a House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.

To correct the problem, the Army started a program in 2006 to account for all of its inventories. To date the Army has accounted for more than 20,000 items worth more than $135 million, she said.

Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., chairman of the subcommittee, said he was startled by the fact “that it took the Army and DoD six years to get the system in place that probably should have been in place by 2001.”

San Francisco - Enterprise search is set to become a pervasive and demanding force in IT over the next several years, according to Gartner analyst Whit Andrews.

“Information access technology will locate and analyze more than 90 percent of data in more than 50 percent of Global 2000 enterprises” by the end of 2012, according to materials from a presentation Andrews gave at Gartner's Symposium ITxpo conference in Las Vegas this week. Gartner refers to enterprise search by the more general phrase “information access technology.”

Some observers saw Microsoft's recent move to acquire enterprise search vendor FAST Search & Transfer as a validation of the market. It will compete with a range of large vendors, such as Autonomy and FAST, along with a series of smaller companies, including Recommind and X1 Technologies.

“All the infrastructure vendors need to respond in some way to the need for effective search technology in their products,” Andrews said in an interview on Thursday.

But it's unclear whether the market will see a rush of major consolidation, given the high cost of buying a top independent player, he said. (Autonomy has a market capitalization of $4 billion, according to its Web site.) “At this point, what I've seen is that this is well short of a gold rush…. It's not easy to see where this is going to go.”

As for smaller players, Andrews said he is “fairly confident they're all looking to be acquired at this point. I think if they don't get bought, then they have to go highly specific.”

Whatever path companies choose regarding enterprise search, they will face major challenges, chiefly the high expectations of users, Andrews noted in his presentation: “End-users of information access technology do not recognize, respect, and treat as reasonable the divisions that application architecture have forced on information access strategy.”

Information itself will need to be organized and augmented to a greater degree, he states. “Critical issues include flexibility of indexing, incorporation of security down to the document level and, in rare cases, the subdocument level, and the flexibility to access APIs in business applications.”

The general methodology for collecting search results will change as well, Andrews predicts.

“The classic model for information access technology is the spider, which travels around the threads of a document Web and returns with a picture of its structure … however, this model demands that the data be somewhat stale, and it is not acceptable for transaction-sensitive business applications or the databases they feed and by which they are fed,” he writes.

An emerging model, in Andrews' words, can be described as an ant: “Rather than traverse a document set and store a pattern of what it finds, the ant travels on well-known pathways to discover the 'freshest' morsel of data and return it to the colony where it can be merged with other such morsels for the good of the whole.”

Andrews also predicted that:

Through the end of 2012, no Global 2000 enterprise will have standardized “absolutely” on a particular information access platform.

Business intelligence will work in concert with enterprise search at 90 percent of Global 2000 companies in 2012. “Absolute convergence between business intelligence and search applications will, typically, not occur, but business intelligence and search will work in tandem,” he wrote. “However, a few exceptional vendors will emerge to provide a combined business intelligence and information access platform.”

Web developers have had a few days to consider the impact of Google's App Engine, which lets third-party developers run applications on Google servers. In the initial beta phase, the first 10,000 developers to apply get 500MB of hosted space and five million page views per month for free.

Dave Winer, a blogging pioneer, wrote that App Engine could unleash “shrink-wrap Net apps” for Web users. App Engine could turn out to be “a standardized platform,” he wrote. “PCs took the black magic out of owning a computer. Now Google is taking the black magic out of operating a scalable Web app.”

But there is mounting concern that App Engine could let Google dominate the next generation of Web applications. “No matter how much your user base and technology [are] worth, almost no company will be willing to purchase your idea because of the high cost of migrating that code out of Google,” Clint Ecker wrote on Ars Technica.

Slowly Controlling the Web

While using Google's infrastructure could lead to new developments in Web programming, Google's access to application user data, trends and behaviors could boost the company's already formidable power.

With App Engine, “they slowly gain control of a major portion of the Web,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, in an e-mail.

But with cloud computing advancing, Google is hardly the only player looking at a platform role. The primary player right now is Amazon, with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform, but clearly EMC, Sun, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo are building up their own clouds. So the criticism of Google may be a bit self-serving, said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT.

Storm Clouds

Indeed, Amazon-funded 37Signals managed a little buzz kill for App Engine this week, accusing Google of ripping off its Campfire real-time chat app with a similar-looking program called Huddle Chat. All 37Signals apps run on EC2.

“We're flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product; we're just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout,” 37Signals founder Jason Fried told the ReadWriteWeb blog. “We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for.”

Google moved quickly to pull the app. In a message on the huddlechat.com domain, Google wrote, “Hi, a couple of our colleagues wrote Huddle Chat in their spare time as a sample application for other developers to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Google App Engine. We've heard some complaints from the developer community about it and because of that we've decided to take it down.”

But ReadWriteWeb readers were generally unimpressed with Fried's position. “There are only so many ways a chat application can look without going overboard,” a reader named Matt wrote. “Both companies took the “less is more” approach and, surprise surprise, they look similar … go figure.”

Amazon is following in the footsteps of brick-and-mortar retailers with an offer customers aren't likely to refuse — a $50 credit to individuals who purchased HD-DVD players. Best Buy and Wal-Mart have already implemented similar policies.

Sony's Blu-ray recently achieved a permanent victory over rival high-definition format HD DVD. With Blu-ray backed by almost every major Hollywood studio, Toshiba raised the white flag on HD DVD. That left thousands of consumers with a device that will soon become obsolete as the industry distributes movies on Blu-ray discs.

Amazon is offering consumers who purchased an HD-DVD player before Feb. 23 a little consolation, a $50 coupon good for anything Amazon sells. Feb. 23 is when Toshiba announced it would stop making HD-DVD players.

“New technologies don't always work out as planned. We at Amazon.com value our customer relationships more than anything and would like to support customers who purchased these players by offering a credit good for $50 off any products sold by Amazon.com,” the company said in an e-mail to customers who purchased the HD-DVD machines.

Priming the Pump

Amazon offered a promotional code for consumers to use during the checkout process. It's not an indefinite offer, though. The deal expires on April 9, 2009. There's one more catch — purchases from third-party merchants on the site are not eligible.

The offer can't be used to pay for special-order titles, e-books or downloadable e-content, wireless service plans, gift certificates, gift wrap, taxes, or shipping and handling. The maximum credit for consumers who may have purchased multiple units is $500 for 10 players.

Amazon also took the opportunity to share some of its top offers on Blu-ray discs, HDTVs and other high-definition technology. The company also reminded customers that the Amazon Marketplace is open for them to sell items they might not want as they upgrade to new ones.

Amazon is not the first retailer to try to appease consumers who purchased HD-DVD players. Last month, Best Buy launched a similar program, awarding $50 to customers who purchased HD-DVD players. On Tuesday Wal-Mart said it is extending its return policy from 90 days to six months on HD-DVD players. Meanwhile, many retailers continue to sell the HD-DVD players they have in stock.

Amazon's Customer-Friendly Moves

“Amazon.com has always attempted to establish a reputation as a Boy Scout for online merchants,” said Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. “This is just another item of evidence that it is continuing that philosophy.”

The philosophy serves Amazon well, he noted, because it has instilled consumer trust and helped establish the e-tailer as a clear leader. Customers have an expectation that Amazon will treat them well, Leigh said.

“Amazon has put together a reputation for treating their customers well. That has led customers to be loyal to them and gravitate toward the Web site, even if they can find lower prices elsewhere,” Leigh said. “This move is just another step in that direction.”

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea’s LG Display Co. on Thursday posted a net profit in the first quarter compared to a loss during the same period last year, as a booming flat-screen TV market boosted panel demand amid tight supplies.

“Last quarter was a notable quarter for us,” Chief Executive Kwon Young-soo said in a statement. “Our performance was encouraging despite the seasonally slow market condition.”

LG Display, the world’s second largest flat panel maker, posted a net profit of $734 million for the quarter ended March 31, reversing a net loss a year ago of $173 million. The result beat analysts’ estimates of a $716 million net profit.

Sales increased 48 percent to $4.13 billion.

All figures include the performance of the company’s overseas units.

Asia’s LCD makers have benefited from strong demand from emerging markets amid limited supplies.

The company, formerly LG.Philips LCD Co., changed its name to LG Display in March, reflecting a reduction in shares held by Royal Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands.

LG.Philips LCD began as a joint venture between South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. and Philips in 1999.

IDC researchers predict that spending on the Linux ecosystem will rise from $21 billion in 2007 to more than $49 billion in 2011, driven by rising enterprise deployments of Linux server operating systems.

Linux server deployments are expanding from infrastructure-oriented applications to more commercially oriented database and enterprise resource-planning workloads “that historically have been the domain of Microsoft Windows and Unix,” noted IDC analysts in a white paper commissioned by the nonprofit Linux Foundation.

“The early adoption of Linux was dominated by infrastructure-oriented workloads, often taking over those workloads from an aging Unix server or Windows NT 4.0 server that was being replaced,” according to the report's authors, Al Gillen, Elaina Stergiades and Brett Waldman. These days, however, Linux is increasingly being “viewed as a solution for wider and more critical business deployments.”

Unix Migrations

According to IDC, total software revenue on the Linux platform amounts to $10 billion today, or 4 percent of an overall total of $242 billion. “That share is expected to grow to more than 9 percent by 2011, or $31 billion in Linux-related software revenue in a total market that will grow to $330 billion,” the analysts said.

IDC projects spending on software related to Linux server platforms between 2006 and 2011 will rise at a compound annual growth rate of 35.7 percent — even as the overall spending on Linux software, hardware and services increases at a projected 24.1 percent clip.

“The growth of Linux as a platform for business-oriented workloads appears to be coming largely from migration of existing Unix deployments in combination with organic growth of Linux deployments in these same workload areas,” the study's authors observed.

Government, financial services, and general services users are “highly likely” to move to Linux as a replacement for existing Unix servers, IDC researchers said. “Other industries have a lower likelihood of selecting Linux as a replacement for existing Unix server installations, but still remain as friendly to Linux as an alternative solution as they are to other migration options,” the report said.

IDC also expects Linux to continue applying competitive pressures on other major server operating environments, including Windows and Unix. “Each of these three platforms has a well-established installed base and will survive over the long term, but market expansion and platform-to-platform migrations, particularly Unix migrations, will continue to be hotly contested by Linux and by Windows,” the researchers predicted.

Growing the Kernel

The growing importance of Linux to big business is also evident from the results of yet another report from the Linux Foundation. Every Linux kernel is being developed by nearly 1,000 developers working for more than 100 different corporations, with 70 to 95 percent of those developers being paid for their work, the authors of the report noted.

Even better, a significant increase is taking place with respect to the number of companies supporting kernel development. Major companies such as IBM, Intel, MIPS Technology, MontaVista, NetApp, Novell, Red Hat and more are finding that by improving the kernel, they have a competitive edge in their markets.

The data presented in the studies shows that Linux has significant momentum, said Linux Foundation spokesperson and report co-author Amanda McPherson.

“Not surprisingly, market momentum — as shown in the IDC report — is reflected in the developer numbers growing so fast,” McPherson noted. “One could also make the observation that the developer momentum and growth in community is translating into market expansion.”

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has moved to set up a system that would send text alerts to people on their mobile phones in case of natural disasters and other emergencies.

With an order released Wednesday, the FCC adopted technical requirements for transmission of the alerts, which would require the cooperation of mobile operators. However, at least one large hurdle remains before the system is launched: No government agency has yet been named to collect and transmit the alerts to mobile operators.

The Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) would be designed to reach U.S. residents regardless whether they have access to a TV, radio or electricity. More than 250 million people in the country have mobile phones today, FCC commissioners noted.

The system would send out three types of alerts: Imminent Threat Alerts, with information on emergencies that may pose an imminent threat to peoples' lives or well-being, Child Abduction Emergency/AMBER Alerts concerning missing children and Presidential Alerts, which would preempt any other pending alerts. The alerts initially would be text only, though with vibration and audio signals for people with disabilities. They eventually might include audio and video content.

Any subscriber to a mobile service with roaming agreements could get the alerts wherever they were, as long as their handset supports the system, according to an FCC statement.

“We are enabling wireless providers that choose to participate in this system to begin designing their networks to deliver wireless alerts,” FCC ChairmanKevin Martin said in a prepared statement. “It would have been better, of course, if we had a Federal entity in place now to take on the role of alert aggregator and gateway.” Martin said he hopes Wednesday's order starts a dialog that helps get an agency assigned to this role quickly.

Participating carriers will be required to comply with the rules adopted in the order within 10 months after it's announced that an agency has been chosen to handle the system, the FCC said in a news release.

The FCC adopted the order in compliance with the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act, which Congress passed in 2006. Its standards are based on the recommendations of the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was intimately involved in developing the idea of a single agency to collect and send alerts to carriers, but then objected to playing that role, Commissioner Michael Copps said in a written statement. FEMA said it would be unable to step in for statutory and other reasons, Copps said.