Mobile telephone alert notifications

[mtbc]

When I lived in Eastern Tennessee, occasionally my mobile telephone would sound with a broadcast notification, typically amber alerts about children in a different Grand Division. The alarm usually sounded at the worst possible time, I remember one was when I was at the closing for my house purchase. I would hit OK to silence it then, at least under Android, I could find no way afterward to find what the message had been.

They are rolling out such a broadcast system in the UK and yesterday we had a test. It didn't actually reach everybody's mobile telephone, even if household members right next to them, on the same plan, did receive it. For some users, like R., their telephone subsequently lost data connectivity, even after reboots, etc. This morning, R. found a cure: turn data roaming on for a while, then off again.

Comments

[armiphlage]

I suppose it's good they tested it, instead of hoping it works when needed.

[mtbc]

It is, though I am unsurprised it didn't go smoothly, the UK tends not to be great at public IT-based projects.

[wpadmirer]

In Florida they decided to test the emergency alert system last Saturday at 4:45 AM.

To say this was an unpopular move is the understatement of the universe.

[mtbc]

My goodness, that's a sure way for people to learn the names of who's in charge.

I used to live very near a tornado siren in Ohio. It was tested at a predictable humane time, I tended to try to find some project to get on with in the cellar or somesuch at those times just to be better insulated from it.

[mellowtigger]

Testing is good. When I was in charge of the phone system at the Animal Humane Society, I decided to do a test of 911 (emergency) calls at all locations. I'm not sure they had ever been tested. I found one that failed to make the outgoing call. 8/

Testing is good. :) A few weeks/months after the repair was done, somebody called 911 for a guest.

[mtbc]

Yay for you. I once worked in an office where everybody else's get out of the building, it's on fire message was, in our room, instead discovered to be stay put, lucky I'm not paranoid, again yay for testing.