This specification is a joint specification between the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).

One of the objectives of the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) is to define a set of requirements for the behavior of the mobile devices whenever a CMAS emergency alert is received. This specification defines a common set of requirements for GSM, UMTS, and CDMA based mobile devices. Implementation of the requirements contained within this specification is mobile device manufacturer dependent. Even though the scope of CMAS includes paging systems, the behavior of paging devices for CMAS alert messages is not contained within this specification.