Emergency siren to all mobile phones on St George's Day?

[pje16]

Emergency Alert test descends into chaos as it fails to work on up to 10 million phones

SNAFU - fortunate that it was just a test

[Mike4]

What happens if the emergency is "All the mobile networks have gone down"?

[pje16]

What happens if the emergency is "All the mobile networks have gone down"?

Semaphore
at least we know it works

[Watis]

What happens if the emergency is "All the mobile networks have gone down"?

Semaphore
at least we know it works

Semaphore won't work at night though.

You'd need to get an Aldis (morse) lamp app for your phone so you can use the flash to signal with.

Watis

[pje16]

Semaphore
at least we know it works

Semaphore won't work at night though.

You'd need to get an Aldis (morse) lamp app for your phone so you can use the flash to signal with.

Watis

I'll take my grinning face off and post this link

https://maritimesa.org/nautical-science ... ing-light/

[tjh290633]

It woke me up just as Saracens and London Irish had kicked off.

Android 10 on EE, wifi calling.

TJH

[stewamax]

The brief voice-over on my OnePlus Android 13 phone sounded more New York than New College.
If 'they' had employed a female BBC Newsreader, the test might have been more acceptable. As it was, it resembled a scam phone call.
Or is the voice-over mobile service dependent or phone dependent or did the phone simply text-to-voice read the emergency alert text?

[James]

What happens if the emergency is "All the mobile networks have gone down"?

Semaphore
at least we know it works

My elderly mother was pulled out of school young to work on the family farm shortly after the end of the war. Her father would use semaphore across the fields to tell her which gates to open etc when herding stock. Both also knew Morse code, although I think that was just as a backup for getting weather reports if all else failed. My grandfather went on to be an early CB radio adopter, but the abilities got bred out eventually. I can barely use WhatsApp, although it's easier to carry a phone than have a set of flags on the tractor.

[didds]

I do not understand why those who did not receive a signal call it a 'cock up'. The whole idea was to find problems since they have never done this before and then try to iron them out.

Dod

I agree. But then presumably there must be a way to ascertain exactly which people/phones/sims did not receive the message, cross referenced with those phone's OS versions, air time providers, powered status, geographical position and alert settings per phone.

Without that info, then it does become somewhat meaningless - unless the process was to just find out extremely roughly how many people would actually die by not receiving the alert, and whether that is an acceptable level of loss/collateral.

(and yes that is the realms of conspiracy theory of course )

[didds]

It woke me up just as Saracens and London Irish had kicked off.

Android 10 on EE, wifi calling.

TJH

Then your alert arrived late - SarvLI kicked off at 1502 I am reliably informed

[Dod101]

Some more technically minded that I am can probably tell me but I was wondering if it was certain signal masts or whatever they are called that were not working properly or is it down to the individual phones?

Dod

[Infrasonic]

Three had a problem across their entire network but haven't explained what it was yet...

I've got one smartphone on Smarty (3 MVNO) and didn't get an alert or any message in emergency alerts history - so a complete failure there for me.

I was in a very busy shopping centre at 3pm and I noticed there weren't that many people getting their phones out. (So maybe contention ratio based?).

The postmortem should be interesting...

[swill453]

I was in a group of 5, 3 of us on O2-based networks got it about a minute before the other 2 who I think were on Vodafone-based networks.

Seems like it was a pretty successful test, all in all. Hopefully 3 will find and fix their problem.

Then in a real disaster scenario the number of people not getting the notification, or being in the vicinity of (and talking to) others who get it, will be negligible. Could save lives I suppose, so worthwhile IMO.

Scott.

[mc2fool]

The brief voice-over on my OnePlus Android 13 phone sounded more New York than New College.
If 'they' had employed a female BBC Newsreader, the test might have been more acceptable. As it was, it resembled a scam phone call.
Or is the voice-over mobile service dependent or phone dependent or did the phone simply text-to-voice read the emergency alert text?

From the parallel thread on the Snug, https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 01#p584701, it appears, anecdotally and unscientifically, that only a small number of folks got a voice read out at all. Most (inc. me) just got the siren and accompanying textual message.

I'd suspect it's a phone settings thing and I suggest going into Settings and (a) entering "emerg" into the search bar and selecting Emergency alerts and seeing if it says anything there about reading them out (my Android 11 phone doesn't) and (b) going to System->Languages->Advanced->Text-to-speech output and seeing which language your phone is using for that facility.

Failing that a general dig around Settings to see if there's anything else that might have it turned on.

[Mike88]

It didn't work for me although I did receive a message. I have a new phone and am on 4 and 5g with notifications on. My provider is o2. I suppose the test was useful in that it was able to identify flaws. However, will the government do anything to resolve the problem?

[elkay]

Without that info, then it does become somewhat meaningless - unless the process was to just find out extremely roughly how many people would actually die by not receiving the alert, and whether that is an acceptable level of loss/collateral.

Anyone who followed the link in the alert would have been asked if they would take a survey. The survey covered things like phone model, os version, network etc. Though when I go back in to the alert now, there is no survey prompt.

The information gleamed from the survey will give a good indication of where there are issues to be ironed out.

Nobody else has mentioned the survey in any of the threads I have seen, but if even 1% of recipients had completed the survey, they would have a lot of data to work with.

[pje16]

Nobody else has mentioned the survey in any of the threads I have seen, but if even 1% of recipients had completed the survey, they would have a lot of data to work with.

They would be better off spending their time fixing it, so it works properly

[servodude]

Nobody else has mentioned the survey in any of the threads I have seen, but if even 1% of recipients had completed the survey, they would have a lot of data to work with.

They would be better off spending their time fixing it, so it works properly

Which in all fairness they need the data to work do
- I hope that they remember it's the surveys they don't get back that tell them the most though

[didds]

Anyone who followed the link in the alert would have been asked if they would take a survey. The survey covered things like phone model, os version, network etc. Though when I go back in to the alert now, there is no survey prompt.

The info on who DID receive it is useful but not the priority/imperative i would suggest.

Meanwhile the pertinent part of the alert actually says

visit gov.uk/alerts for more information.
This is a test. You do not need to take any action

Nothing about please complete a survey. Or an indication that there is a survey even. The overall instruction is generically to not take any action.

Following that link, takes one to a page where again there is no obvious link to a survery.

Meanwhile if one didnt receive the alert, there wasnt even that link and clear instruction to follow. (FTR I received the alert on my android phone, but not on my iphone)

Where is this survey? and where is the explanation and link to it ?

I reiterate - unless the PTB can ascertain who did NOT receive the alerts and the underlying OS etc etc etc then the test is pretty meaningless overall.

[Mike4]

I think this exercise has been a good example of a solution looking for a problem. It looks to me as though the PTB are twerping about installing this pointless 'Warning System" just because they can.

This whole farago has simply demonstrated to the Great British Public that 'in an emergency', it cannot and must not rely on warning messages from the government arriving on its phones.