Poll: Public emergency alerts to be sent to all UK mobile phones

Did you receive the Alert?

  • Yes

    Votes: 134 56.5%

  • No

    Votes: 103 43.5%
  • Total voters
    237
Messages would only ever come from the government or emergency services and will initially focus on the most serious weather-related events, with the ability to get a message to 90% of mobile users within the relevant area

Could be very useful as nobody in the UK ever talks about the weather...
 
Seems like a good idea to me, relying on police cars driving up and down the street with megaphones etc seems like such a poor way of doing things when 95% of people have an addressable communication device in their pocket.

My only concern would be that it gets used too often, becoming an annoyance rather than a useful means of communication (thinking of those weather alerts the met office issues every time there's a bit of rain, or those motorway information boards warning of incidents/debris/fog/etc which are almost always completely wrong).
 
Well I'd love to step up on the box and make a political comment, or be scared that MI5 would find out I have a **** every morning at 5am, but due to living in an area prone to flooding, it is very welcome from me.
 
iron_monkey said:
Warning your govenment waisted 37billion of your hard earned cash with their last app, please click the link to donate now!
Click to expand...
IIRC this doesn't require any new stuff as it's part of a default system on the mobile phones, or shouldn't require much. So less chance for them to hand billions over to their buddies especially as they can't claim they're doing this as an emergency response to a new situation.

I can see it being worth doing, especially if they do it how it's done in most other countries where it can be triggered for phones within reach of mobile phone towers in certain areas, so you get the alert that the river you're camping near is likely to flood even if you normally live 100 miles away, as the Environment Agencies' opt in Floodline system only alerts you to risk of flooding near your registered home.
I remember when we had to be evacuated due to a fire at a printers about 100m away, they had a load of gas canisters so the "danger area" was quite large, it would have been helpful then as the police were going door to door to tell people to clear out, and missed the 4 houses nearest the fire as they were round a bit of a corner :p


On the flip side I fully expect to get woken up at 2am every other week because someone decides to make the system accessible via a public web interface with the "12345" as the password.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom