Public emergency alerts to be sent to all UK smartphones on 23rd April

oldernonethewiser

Grey_Critic said:

It is quite funny reading the *I don't want this - It is my rights etc. Here in Huddersfield we have Syngenta (formerly ICI) and they will be testing their siren this week.

I doubt the people hearing it are going to complain - if there is an *incident* then it is a way of warning people - the SMS message just adds to the safet.

We heard it yesterday when we were driving - don't see what all the fuss is about, our phones (depending how set up) are constantly making sound to tell us Texts and emails have arrived. In the car my phone connects hands free - seems to me that the protests are people objecting for the sake of it.

All day long we hear Emergency Services sirens and traffic - we accept them so why not these

Don't need a smart phone to hear an ambulance😉

savergrant

Well it's good to know that in the event of severe flooding the government will send my phone a notification to explain why my socks feel wet.
But I don't want to hear about a risk of flooding at the other end of the country.

savergrant

spud17 said:

2 active sims in my phone, but only received one alert... I think.
Did anyone get an alert per sim?
On reading that there was a spread of times that the alert arrived, I'd be amazed if both sims went off at the exact same time.

As I understand it the alert was a "push notification" sent to compatible devices. So the system might have recognised where two sims were in the same device? I only got the alert once in a device which has ee and o2 network sims. It was dead on 3pm. Other phones in the house went off at 2:59 (ee) and 3:01 (voda).

powerful_Rogue

savergrant said:

Well it's good to know that in the event of severe flooding the government will send my phone a notification to explain why my socks feel wet.
But I don't want to hear about a risk of flooding at the other end of the country.

This is half the problem, people too quick to have a moan rather then spend a few minutes reading about what the alerts actually are.

You’ll get alerts based on your current location - not where you live or work. You do not need to turn on location services to receive alerts.

https://www.gov.uk/alerts

Grey_Critic

This was a test of the system and problems are reported on some networkd and some areas.

 so no doubt there will be another test.

Moan as much as you like it will happen

facade

spud17 said:

2 active sims in my phone, but only received one alert... I think.
Did anyone get an alert per sim?
On reading that there was a spread of times that the alert arrived, I'd be amazed if both sims went off at the exact same time.

Does it actually use both at once, and is simultaneously logged into both networks?

I thought you select the active SIM somehow, otherwise you could receive two calls at once, and how would it know which to use when dialling out?

Anyway it should have worked SIM-less, so the alert goes to the 'phone not the SIM.

savergrant

If a phone doesn't have a sim in it surely it could only receive incoming messages through a WiFi connection? As the sim is the phone's connection to the cellular network.

On my dual sim phone both sims are set to always active, so I can receive a call on either number at any time. Will have to try using family phones and call both numbers (near) simultaneously.

Nelliegrace

So much for modern technology.

In the 1950’s and 60’s one landline call summoned the members of the Civil Defence to report immediately for a crisis. 

The basic WW2 sirens could be heard for up to 25 miles. 
We had a four minute warning system covering the whole country for a nuclear attack. 

With a gap of several minutes between the best and second best phone message, and millions of people not getting the message, it seems that most of us would be toast. 

victor2

Nelliegrace said:

So much for modern technology.

In the 1950’s and 60’s one landline call summoned the members of the Civil Defence to report immediately for a crisis. 

The basic WW2 sirens could be heard for up to 25 miles. 
We had a four minute warning system covering the whole country for a nuclear attack. 

With a gap of several minutes between the best and second best phone message, and millions of people not getting the message, it seems that most of us would be toast. 

And what would those who actually got a 4 minute warning of becoming toast do? 

powerful_Rogue

Nelliegrace said:

So much for modern technology.

In the 1950’s and 60’s one landline call summoned the members of the Civil Defence to report immediately for a crisis. 

The basic WW2 sirens could be heard for up to 25 miles. 
We had a four minute warning system covering the whole country for a nuclear attack. 

With a gap of several minutes between the best and second best phone message, and millions of people not getting the message, it seems that most of us would be toast. 

Good job it was a test then, to iron things out.