Only 50% of my house hold got it anyway. Is it only targeting numbers on the do not call registry or something? It even fails as a way to inform everyone.
I still haven’t gotten this. I guess I’m going to die.
Or you’re one of those who AREN’T going to die.
These texts aren’t targeting any particular phone. These are broadcasts sent on messages that all phone are listening to, for staying attached to a cellular network
Also the messages are sent to a particular area. In this case, the test was nation-wide to see if the operators and phones are ready to do this in emergency. Most of the messages are very targeted. In fact within a year or two, the broadcasts will also have a polygon (set of co-ordinates) in them, and each phone can determine if they are within the polygon before alerting. Most phone software won’t support the geo-fenced messages though for several years.
This also isn’t a US based system. It’s there in Canada, EU, Japan, and most other places running 3G and 4G networks. In US, it’s called CMAS. Canada has a version of CMAS, and EU has EU-ALERT, which is pretty much the same thing. Japan has a slightly different system ETWS but still based on 3G/4G standards.
They all work the same way, where there can be about 20 or 30 different emergency alert IDs. Some you can opt out, and some you can’t. In CMAS (US), the highest level is called Presidential Alert, but the next three or four alerts are also very high priority, which you can’t opt out. Canada or an EU nation will call Presidential Alert something else but it’s the exact same thing.
On the back-end, emergency systems generate warnings with a particular location. They know all the cell-phone towers in that area, and send the warnings out only to those cell-towers. Any phone currently camped on those towers will show the broadcast alerts.
That was a lot of information, thanks. I didn’t see anything to explain why two of our phones didn’t get the message? We were all in the same 3 mile radius all day and all on the same provider and plan?
Aha, a perfect reason to put off even longer upgrading from my trusty flip phone to a smartypantsphone.
This doesn’t work on the flip phones. So in the event of some sort of nationwide emergency we’ll have a number of, shall we say, older individuals without a clue, the very group that might need this the most. Sounds perfect!
Ugh. Don’t remind me. One of the most richest most resourceful and powerful countries on the planet we can’t get seniors out of something like that during a disaster. No alert fixes things like this, and that’s one area, not even nationwide.
Maybe the next message is about asking if anyone want to work for them. I heard they have problems hiring people in the white house.
How else are you going to announce the start and end of The Purge?
America didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks.
Was it because of Slavery? Or because of low wage immigrant workers? Or the forced industrialization caused by the Civil War and later by World War 2?
Or about hard working Americans and our can do attitude?
It kind of did, with the Marshall Plan.
I thought it was through careful spending? Like the Louisiana Purchase, for instance. We spent, what, 3 million for all that land? That’s a pretty good deal, considering it was French!
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I am glad I put this in P&R. I had a feeling…
Jesus, people.
Three mile radius is big enough area, where the phones may be listening to different cell-towers, and where one of them wasn’t included in the broadcast. That’s assuming your phones were of same make and firmware, because not all phones and software support this feature in the first place. Then there’s also the differences in how certain operators until now had preferred to propagate the warnings (whether over 3G or 4G or both), and had coverage holes for this particular test.
It’s closer to 2 miles, it’s a really small town and we only have one tower near us. The next closest one, if the main one goes down, drops us all to 3G, regardless of carrier (all three of the carriers in this state are on this tower). Two of us have iPhone 6s, two have Android Galaxy S6. One Galaxy did not get the text, one iPhone did not get the text. Not really much of a pattern, I stand by my initial statement that the system didn’t work, if the goal was to hit every cell phone. Talking to co-workers this morning, I heard anecdotally about 3 or 4 people that got the text multiple times, up to three times for one user.