Mobile alerting trials for public emergencies (UK)

This service potentially will be used in the UK (as in other countries) to alert people in a particular area via their mobiles of an emergency and may give them appropriate instructions on what to do. The service does not require the government or anyone else to know individual mobile numbers – it works on all mobile devices within an area defined by the emergency.

Three trials were run last autumn, working with three of the UK’s biggest mobile network operators to test different technical approaches for such a system. Two different approaches were tested as part of the trials:

  • cell Broadcast service (CBS): the broadcast of a text-type message to all handsets in a defined area
  • location-based SMS messaging: all numbers in a specific location receive a traditional SMS message

Of the two, (more…)