Rude awakening for O2 customers after network runs surprise test of emergency mobile alert system
- Reference: 1620752474
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/05/11/o2_emergency_alert/
- Source link:
Everyone, that is, except customers of O2, who arose this morning to a noise described as akin to a "nuclear siren" after the network performed an unannounced test of the UK's emergency alert system.
The two alerts, sent around 0745 and 0800, were accompanied by a forebodingly shrill beep, the kind of which you'd expect to hear if a cruise missile was heading to your house. Meanwhile, a disembodied computerised voice read out the alert's message, which said as follows:
EMERGENCY ALERT
*** This is a Test Message *** This is an O2 Test Message to test Cell Broadcast. No action required. In future, alerts like this one may be used to warn you about a danger to life in the local area. *** End of Test Message ***
You can listen to the alert in the embedded tweet below.
Second loud [1]@O2 Emergency Alert test of the morning [2]pic.twitter.com/kDUbhAE44i — Dave (@dflite) [3]May 11, 2021
The text – which was also received by customers of MVNOs that use O2's network in Britain, including Giffgaff, Sky Mobile, and Tesco Mobile – disrupted lie-ins, and slightly more seriously, caused genuine alarm among some.
"Thought I'd get to sleep in late this morning, but no, @O2 thought that 7:30-45(ish) AM and 8:00AM were the perfect times to test their new emergency alert system," moaned [4]one Twitter user .
[5]
[6]
[7]
"After receiving a loud, emergency alert message from you at 7:45am and again at 8am, my panic attack has just become slightly bearable. Couldn't you have done this in the afternoon?" said [8]another .
This alarm is perhaps understandable, considering the UK was a latecomer to the adoption of Cell Broadcast alerts, and the public is largely unfamiliar with them. Elsewhere around the world, Cell Broadcast is used to warn of everything from tornadoes and earthquakes, to missing children.
The tech has been adopted in the US, South Korea, Japan, and New Zealand, to name just a few. Additionally, the European Union has created its own standard for Cell Broadcast messaging, called EU-Alert. This has formed the basis for systems in the Netherlands, Lithuania, Romania, and Greece.
[9]
The UK government first started exploring the use of mobile alerts during the Coalition years. Between 2013 and 2015, the Cabinet Office evaluated the technology, launching trials in North Yorkshire, Glasgow, and Suffolk. Later tests were carried out in 2018 and 2019, in partnership with the Environment Agency, EE, and the University of Hull.
Despite the rude awakening, O2 subscribers can at least take comfort in the fact that they're not about to experience the kind of dystopian nuclear afterlife depicted in the brutally bleak TV film Threads .
And it could have been worse. In 2018, a rogue Cell Broadcast message [10]warned Hawaiians of an incoming ballistic missile , prompting a mass scramble for shelter. It took 38 minutes for the local authorities to fess up to the mistake. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://twitter.com/O2?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[2] https://t.co/kDUbhAE44i
[3] https://twitter.com/dflite/status/1392019688218058754?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://twitter.com/a1tam0nt_/status/1392016883805741061
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YJr@fJT998QJm72aAPlA9QAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YJr@fJT998QJm72aAPlA9QAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YJr@fJT998QJm72aAPlA9QAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://twitter.com/DebWhatford/status/1392056139152596992
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YJr@fJT998QJm72aAPlA9QAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/24/hawaii_governor_forgot_twitter_password_nuclear_attack/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: To be honest
No fair! You would be the only one to survive the event! You bastard! Waaaahhhhh hahahaha...
*Hands you a pint*
Drink up, I'll leave out a box of Twinkies for you to feast on after we're all gone. =-Jp
Re: To be honest
You’ve had my year too!!
I did not receive such a message on my phone. Merely a push notification from Citymapper saying that the train network is completely TITSUP. Should I be concerned?
My work phone is on O2 and received no such alert. Suspect the warning was perhaps geographically restricted or only sent to customers on particular types of contracts?
When Rogers sent a test alert they warned us a couple of days in advance to let us know the date and time.
Nice idea, usually ruined by overuse
Here in Oregon, I used to have the government & AMBER alerts enabled on my phone. But after the second time of getting woken at 3AM by an ear-splitting siren and an alert along the lines of “MISSING CHILD POSSIBLY ABDUCTED, IN VICINITY OF BOISE IDAHO” (clue: Boise is about 500 miles away, so obviously it’s vital to wake everyone in a 1000-mile radius and give them a coronary) I switched them off. If the clueless chucklefucks who operate the system had only learned from “the boy who cried wolf”…
Re: Nice idea, usually ruined by overuse
We have worse here - it's done at the province (ie state) level - with provinces the size of european countries.
So kid snatched by divorced parent on the border of another state, where his whole family live - and they don't put announcements in that province but alert me 1000mi and 2 ferries away.
It's like a Scottish dad snatching his kid in Berwick and and they don't put out an alert in Scotland but everyones phone in Jersey rings.
It is also because they are stupid
If they allowed phones to have them work as a notification that only comes up when you next unlock your device I think a lot more people would enable them. It would be simple to have them "withdrawn" if the reason for it has expired by the time you unlock your phone.
What good is it to wake people up with an Amber Alert? What am I going to do about it when I'm in bed? What am I going to do about it when I'm in a meeting?
The only time it does any good is when I'm driving or otherwise out and about. They should be blocked when you're on your home or work network, because they are 100% useless to deliver to anyone at that time.
They need to make the text alert louder
I couldn't hear it over the noise of the nuclear explosions outside.
The text – which was also received by customers of MVNOs that use O2's network in Britain, including Giffgaff,
Nope. Didn't get one. So...either this is incorrect, or the system is unreliable. Hmm.
Maybe the nuclear apocalypse only happened in some parts of the country, and your area was spared?
I mean, there are parts of the UK - and I am deliberately not going to name them, so feel free to think of your own according to individual prejudice - where the inhabitants are already living in a ruined lawless dystopia, and the Russians wouldn't want to waste their very expensive missiles...
Grew up in Sheffield in the 80s.
They filmed Threads here because the only set dressing needed was to clean the place up a bit for the post-apocalypse scenes
Turn phone off or leave it downstairs, then go to bed without the possibility of the damn thing waking you up.
Not on O2 so the only thing I missed was a call from a bloke from Yorkshire Water having trouble locating one of their holes in the road in relation to my house because their GIS has had the wrong house name ever since they downloaded it from PAF. PAF was corrected about 20 years ago.
Of course if GIS says it's so it must be right. So that wasn't one of their unmarked water mains that appeared in a hole they dug last year. The excuse that time was that it must be an old dead main despite the fact that the leaking pipe went underneath it and the connection it makes with the live water main dates back to the mid to late '50s.
"Cell Broadcast is not affected by traffic load"
After reading this article I was curious, I'd never heard about this technology before.
So I [1]looked it up .
It is so reassuring to know that, when I'm desperately trying to call for help, my phone will be able to blare at me that I may be in trouble.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
To be honest
If I got that message.. I'd say simply "Thank god I dont have to put up with any more work related shit", walk outside , sit down, and await the sunshine.
Then spend the rest of the day angry as f*** because I wasn't dead.
Icon... yupp