The Draft Regulation on Establishment and Management of the Public Mobile Warning System ("Draft Regulation"), has been published on the Information and Communication Technologies Authority's ("ICTA") website on January 14, 2020.

The Draft Regulation which is based on certain articles of the Electronic Communications Law No. 5809 ("ECL") is mainly about the establishment and management of the systems which provide users to get notifications in certain geographical areas, in cases of disaster and emergency and where there is a threat of public order, national security and national cyber security.

The Methods of Sending Notifications

The Draft Regulation provides definitions on certain terms which will be used for these notifications. CMAS (Commercial Mobile Alarm System) is defined as the system which provides users who have a device with the necessary technical specifications, to receive a notification in case of a disaster; the announcement before the call is defined as the voice record which is played to the subscriber before the call of mobile electronic communication network; CBS (Cell Broadcast System) is defined as the technology which provides all users in a certain area to deliver a text message. With this new regulation, users who are in certain geographical areas will receive notifications at least through one of these methods or SMS ("Short Message Service").

The public mobile warning system will be established with the coordination of ICTA.

Liabilities of the Operators

The Draft Regulation defines the term Operator as the company that provides mobile electronic communication service or provides mobile electronic communication network and operates its infrastructure within the scope of an authorization.

The operators are obliged to establish and operate the technical infrastructure in order to send the notifications through CMAS, CBS, SMS and the announcement before the call, which are sent to them by the public mobile warning system within three months following the Draft Regulation is entered in force. The Draft Regulation also states that these notifications should be send within the scope of this Draft Regulation and within the defined terms and performance criteria and fully and free of charge.

According to the Draft Regulation, the Operators cannot use the CBS capacity and the announcement before the call method for the purposes other than the ones stated in the Draft Regulation. If the SMS capacity which is established for the public warning system is used for commercial purposes, the Operator takes measurements to restrict the maximum number of messages to be sent and the number of subscribers in a certain period of time to use the capacity controllably.

The Requirements in terms of CMAS

The Draft Regulation states that the notification to be made by CMAS will be made in three (3) categories; (i) state-level announcements, (ii) the warnings regarding life threats and (iii) the announcements of loss or smuggle. These notifications will be automatically sent to all users and the notifications should be at least 160 and up to 360 characters long. The Draft Regulation also states that it is under the users' discretion to receive the notifications under the categories (ii) and (iii), however, rejecting state-level announcement is not allowed. Per the Draft Regulation, voice alert, visual alert, vibration alert, etc. methods will be used to facilitate disabled and elderly subscribers to receive notifications.

The operator broadcasts the notifications sent by the authorized user through the CMAS method, to be sent to the users, within one (1) minute, following the completion of all approval processes in the notification approval process.

The Requirements in terms of SMS

Notifications to be made by SMS method within the scope of the public mobile alert system can be made on the basis of the selected geographical region, province, district and area. The Draft Regulation also provides a formula to calculate the time of which the operators are required to send the notifications by SMS.

The Requirements in terms of the Announcement before the Call

According to the Draft Regulation, announcement content before the call is uploaded to the public mobile warning system in the format determined by ICTA, by the relevant authorized user. Per the Draft Regulation, the information about how long the recorded announcement will be applied by the operator and the number of consecutive calls of a subscriber to be played within this period are entered into the public mobile warning system by the relevant authorized user. Authorized user is defined as the representative of the institution and organization who is authorized to determine the notifications within the scope of the Draft Regulation.

The Draft Regulation states that the operators should prepare their systems before the call method within one hour after all approval processes in the notification approval process are completed and the content of the announcement should be up to fifteen (15) seconds.

The Requirements in terms of CBS

The operator should broadcast the notifications to be sent by CBS method to the users within one (1) minute, after all approval processes in the notification approval process are completed, independent of the geographical area notified by the authorized user.

Administrative Sanctions

The Draft Regulation states that if the operator fails to comply with the articles of the regulation, the Regulation of Administrative Sanctions of ICTA will be applied.

The Enforcement of the Draft Regulation

The Draft Regulation was published on the ICTA's official website for fifteen (15) days on for public consultation of the relevant public institutions and organizations and legal entities. The period to submit the public consultations ended on January 29, 2020. The Draft Regulation has not been published in the Official Gazette and thus, has not entered into force as of the date of this article.

This article was first published in Legal Insights Quarterly by ELIG Gürkaynak Attorneys-at-Law in June 2020. A link to the full Legal Insight Quarterly may be found here

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