I set up a new mobile yesterday, my emergency 'phone in case I break my leg while walking the dog. One of the options on it is something to do with emergency/service calls (sod's law, can't find it now) which I turned n.
We had a power cut about half an hour ago and a message cam though on the 'phone saying they were on the job and hoped to restore power by 15:30 (it's actually back on now).
How do they send a message like that to (presumably) all the people who have opted in?
Dunno anything about the technical side of things but I think there is a system built into the network to message every phone. When we were on holiday in New Zealand we got a test message as part of an earthquake warning system.
Tim
Funny you should mention that...
Many thanks Tim+ & Mark :-)
The new system should be running by the time Putin finally loses it.
.....but it won't be quick enough to beat the NMP
Jeff Gaines <jgaines snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk> wrote
The system can see which phones are in the relevant area because the system keeps track of which phones can be seen by which towers so it can connect an incoming call to the phone when someone rings it.
There is, I heard mention of it last night on TV, but there only for emergencies.
Jeff's message I think was probably an opt your phone number in to utility messages. I get them from energy and water providers, because I opted my number in.
It's just bulk SMS, like say your bank might use for telling you stuff. Companies like AQL offer an API that will happily send thousands of SMSes in a batch.
The 'hurricane alert' system is different. It's used a lot in the US - I think there's a proposal for it coming here, but not sure if it has been implemented. It's a broadcast message to all phones in the area, no need for your number.
As to how they got your number, maybe you opted in at some point? I still get SMS alerts for power cuts one house ago, and the other day I got an email alert about works relating to an electricity account I stopped using in 2015 or earlier.
Theo
Yes you can turn off the messages going out but you still get them coming in. The reason for the switch is often that Granny hits the wrong button and continually rings 999 by accident. Brian
No but you will know what caused the NMP.
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