The French security alert follows a plan, codenamed Vigipirate, which was first introduced in 1995 following a series of bombings in Paris that were blamed on Algerian guerrillas of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
The government's Emergency Alert System has had just such a plan in the works for a while now, and Sprint Nextel is becoming the first national carrier to trial a system capable of sending targeted, location based alerts when bad stuff goes down.