The UK Government recently conducted its first-ever nationwide test of a new emergency alert system.

While the test reached millions of 4G and 5G mobile phones, it was met with mixed results as some people claimed to have received the alert early or not at all.

The alerts were scheduled to be sent out at 3pm on Sunday, with a message appearing on mobile screens accompanied by an alarm. However, several users reported receiving the alert at 2.59 pm or even later than the designated time.

What is it?

Designed to warn citizens of life-threatening situations such as flooding, wildfires, terror attacks, and nuclear threats, the UK’s emergency alert system is modelled after successful initiatives in the United States, Canada, Japan, and the Netherlands.

The alarm and vibration associated with the alert are designed to last up to 10 seconds, even on devices set to silent mode.

What happened?

While the test demonstrated the system’s potential to reach a vast audience and even aside from the failure to send to some, the inconsistencies in delivery times highlight the need for further improvements before it can be considered a reliable source of emergency communication.

Jane West, from East Kilbride and with the O2 network in Scotland, told me:

“I was expecting to hear the new emergency alert this afternoon, but my phone was silent. I’ve seen loads of posts explaining how to disable it on my phone, but I think it’s a good idea & didn’t do that. Thankfully, this was a test run & not a real emergency.”

The message most received read:

“This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a new UK government service that will warn you if there’s a life-threatening emergency nearby. In a real emergency, follow the instructions in the alert to keep yourself and others safe. Visit gov.uk/alerts for more information. This is a test. You do not need to take any action.”

Why didn’t some receive the message?

One common factor in missed alerts for many people is their mobile network, primarily but not limited to Three and O2. Mobile network Three is working closely with the government to understand why alerts weren’t received. In a statement, a Three spokesperson told me:

“We are aware that a number of customers have not received the test alert. We are working closely with the government to understand why and ensure it doesn’t happen when the system is in use.”

Other reasons why you might not have received the alert

  • Your phone hasn’t had a software update in years (one was required to enable the alert)
  • You didn’t have 4G or 5G signal (the alert wasn’t sent over 3G networks)

For most, however, the reason was simple, their mobile network.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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89 COMMENTS

  1. was it designed by the same people who did the world beating covid app, because we all know how well that went not…

      • Very wise Jack. Start thinking for yourself and fall back on your training. You can take the man out of the military but you can’t take the military out of the man.
        With any luck, this alert system being tested, will focus minds on … “What do we do next?”

        • Hmmm…might be beneficial for other scenarios, but for a ‘nuclear threat,’ the default wisdom from Uncle Sugar is apparently, “bend down and kiss your ass goodbye.” Always thought it was just short of criminally negligent to de-emphasize civil defense. Hope HMG has had a more rational, intelligent approach…🤞

          • Don’t worry, it’s all about weather warnings, honest!
            There is no mention of uncle Vladimir laying a sun egg on us. (Even if the politicians have blown the dust off their bomb proof bunker evacuation plans. Shush you didn’t hear that from me.)
            I honestly believe trying to catch the BOMB in one’s arms is the best policy in case of nuclear war. The end will at least be very quick. Much better than factor 1,000,000,000 sunscreen.

            Rational and intelligent are not terms we Brits usually associated with HM Gov. Neither is honest.

            On that subject. I have it on “good authority” that many towns in Russia are reopening their old Cold War bomb shelters and restocking them. It looks like prepping has become the fastest growing Russian passtime. Along with digging anti tank ditches. At least someone is taking Col Putin’s threats seriously.

          • “Hope HMG has had a more rational, intelligent approach…”
            nearly spat my cornflakes out- Joined up thinking seems very divorced from HMG. We have practically abandoned civil defence since the 1990s so we can concentrate on tax cuts demolishing the state.
            My very basic unsmart mobile got no alert. After the reckless, juvenille approach of HMG to Covid, I doubt they’re much concerned about the public anyway. Protecting their own wealth is another far higher priority.

        • Thanks George. I guess after long service you get sick of “nanny”. The Covid fiasco convinced me that government does not have citizens interests at heart. Politicians are soundbite and populist. No substance in anything they do. And as for what passes as media? I will stop there.

      • jack, agreed what UK situation would an alert be useful. large disasters the govt is overwhelmed and support wont be coming. maybe a tsunami warning less likely in UK and nuclear attack rather not know.

      • Amen. I was against the alert on principle and through a blazing distrust of the government, however at the same time I am glad they are thinking of providing an early warning nuclear alert system (which is what this essentially is IF the government don’t misuse it, which I firmly believe they will) This was one of the gaps I’ve noted that we’ve had since the original early warning system fell out of use.
        Granted it does raise the question of what use an early warning is for a nuclear strike, but those 2 minutes may give enough time to get to some sort of reasonable shelter and I think it would save at least some lives.
        I just wish they had called it this rather than all the smoke and mirrors. I guess they don’t want the peasants to panic or maybe the risk of nuclear strike on out country is significant and they just want to keep quiet about it.

        • It is simply a matter of trust. I have none at all in them. We had a reasonably good civil defence set up once. The AFS, ROC etc. Politicians are, imho, untrustworthy and unreliable. And, as you say, they will misuse any alert system as their track record is far from honest. What little faith I had left dropped with the use of “nudge units” and 77th recently.

    • “was it designed by the same people who did the world beating covid app,”

      The Network Operators are the ones at fault here…

      Plus the Covid App worked….

    • Exactly so.

      That is, rightly, contained in the headline…..

      It is why the forces do exercises to do people and procedures can be debugged….things learned…..improvements made….

      This project was actually started in about 2010….that is another story…..however the risk thresholds of mad dictators doing silly things have risen since then!

  3. People will not get the message at exactly the test time. All the messages have to be queued for every phone in the radius of a tower plus maintaining the normal traffic.

      • Yeah the alert would not have been prioritised above normal traffic (which it might be in a genuine emergency). I’m guessing they allocated it a couple of minutes to deliver all the message so probably started the exercise at 14:59. It would make sense that some people especially in areas with fewer phones would get their message closer to the beginning of the test.

        • Undoubtedly, 999 calls would take precedence. And in a real-world scenario a minute or two isn’t going to have little impact.

          Three now seems to be reporting that they’ve identified the technical problem that affected their network.

          • Being a test virtually everthing would take precidence. They will start analysis of the reports for each tower. There will probably be a number of faults and a few hardware & software upgrades. Abolition of the 3G network will also help as will the coninued roll out of 5G. There will be more tests to come which are not on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

      • Yes even though the message would have been really low priority it is surprising how quickly these towers can churn through that sort of message.

    • Just a slight correction: the alert is sent as a repeated broadcast, not queued per device. The random receive timings are a combination of devices only listening periodically, and different networks starting to broadcast at slightly different times.

  4. So after weeks of scare mongering by the usual suspects, the UK carried out a test using mobile phones in which to bring the Uk national warning system into the 21st century. In the past we used beacons, church bells and during the cold war, the use of TV and radio. 
    The system is similar to those implemented by other nations, such as the EU which enacted a law for all its constituent parts to issue warnings to its citizens in 2018 (to be on line by June 2022) after the deadly ISIS attack on Paris in 2015, which saw 7 ISIS terrorists murder 130 people and injure another 416 in one night. We saw a similar attempt in London (Nov 2017) when 3 Islamists ran amok killing 8 people and injuring 48.
    So, the need has arisen to quickly warn people in such areas to get under cover ASAP and so the Uk looked at others and copied them and guess what, the very people who complained about the system in the first place are now complaining some didn’t get the signal. It was a TEST, which is a method used to see if things work and if they don’t, they make changes until it works. Oh, regards those people who didn’t receive the test warning, reading the news and social media it appears that the majority who didn’t receive it are on the 3 network. 

        • Nice one ho ho ho.
          I celebrated St Georges Day as usual for the tenth year straight. Flags and all. (St Georges Cross and Union Jack.) Something I started doing when I found out it offended the woke minded and anti-British traditions cadre.
          I’m all for a bank holiday to officially mark the occasion in style. Complete with military parades etc.
          I think we should also celebrate an Abolitionists Day to celebrate the British efforts to abolish the slave trade. Also a Crusaders Day to celebrate the First Crusade. Both events we should be very proud of and are a part of our heritage.

          • Here, Here, we have our culture and we are proud of it. No one should feel that we can’t celebrate our traditions for ‘fear of upsetting other’s’! That would be terribly wrong to deprive us of our rights to express and celebrate ourselves and our traditions! Surely people really aren’t ‘not ringing bells’ due to fear of offending others?!!

          • Power to you Claire. Sorry I missed this reply when you posted it. British and proud. Just look what we gave to the world.

        • Lol! His geography teacher must have been from China! https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=82a28c29dbb80ca6JmltdHM9MTY4MjI5NDQwMCZpZ3VpZD0zZWI5NmVmMy1jYTY0LTYwMDUtMWZmZS03ZTRiY2IzMTYxNzcmaW5zaWQ9NTUzOQ&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=3eb96ef3-ca64-6005-1ffe-7e4bcb316177&u=a1L2ltYWdlcy9zZWFyY2g_cT1UZWFjaGVyJTIwV2hvJTIwSXMlMjBCYWQmRk9STT1JUUZSQkEmaWQ9NDhEMkVCQjgwRDRCN0I2QkQ5MkExRDk1NTA1RTc2NDI4NEQyODQzNQ&ntb=1

  5. I do find this one a bit funny…with the government insisting all this effort is almost exclusively for the British weather…..just when the second largest nuclear power decides to kick of a war in Europe and starts threatening to us nuclear weapons….but it’s totally nothing to do with that and deffo the weather…

  6. This is all good. It brings emergency communication into the 21st Century, which is the right thing to do. And yes, not least because of idiots in the Kremlin having dreams of grandeur to be a next Peter the Great.

  7. I am loving the crackpot conspiracy theories going around for the alert like its a trigger for something in the covid vaccines.

    • Yes the conspiracy theory was that with all phones being triggered at the same time it would generate some type of ‘wave’ that would ‘active’ Covid vaccines and kill everyone vaccinated in a single act of genocide. No doubt some loony antivaxer watched the “Kingsman” movie recently and decided that the director/writer was trying to reveal this evil plot against humanity by making a movie…

      Conspiracy theorist, you can give them facts, but you can’t make them think 🤣

      • Really was that the one going around…god there are some people who really really need educating on evidence base and what is a reliable source of information.

        • Afraid so. Once they believe one conspiracy theory they tend to fall down the rabbit hole and believe all sorts of nonsense. Most anti-vaxxers also deny climate-change, believe in chem-trails, and support Putin in his invasion. 🤦🏻‍♂️

          • yes is very said because in every field their is a place for question and discussion but the Anti brigade make it impossible. Every vaccine needs a rational discussion on things like, efficacy, safety, health economies etc ( I firmly believe some of the actions around RNA messenger vaccines and other covid vaccines was very fast and loose and there was was almost no rational discuss over risks vs benefits in some groups…due to both the risk of covid to the economy and the fear of anti vac movement….the risk vs benefits to children is one of the closest I have seen in any vaccine and as for the pre covid safety and efficacy case for RNA messengers…. pre covid we were still firmly in the longitudinal phase of reaserch still looking into longer term efficacy vs safety and had about a decade to go before anyone was getting a licence….and you cannot really compress longitudinal studies….)

      • As Ronny Reagan famously said “the most terrifying nine words in English language are – I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

        • He also said “facts are stupid things” and “you can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans”, do you believe these too? 🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

          • I don’t engage with clearly infantile trolls who don’t even have the simple courage to use their own name. “Dawg mah cats” was a quotation from Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. End of.

          • Proof that your real name is “Terence Patrick Hewett”, big fat zero.
            And as a troll you’re far more likely to try and give your online persona more credibility by using a full name. However the idiocy of your posts destroy any credibility you had.

            Yes you’re keen on throughout out random quotes, well they are slightly more coherent than your own prose I suppose.

            Why is an anarchist such as yourself even on this site?

          • You are really a sad trolling twerp. Mocking faith? Just adds to your incredible list of idiotic activity on here. One of the reasons I usually just read and not post? Trolls like you.

          • People of real faith don’t blurt out their beliefs at every opportunity. That trait tends be of those who have yet to learn real real faith actually is…
            Better a ‘troll’ than a Pharisee

          • You know, reading the cr*p you post used to be funny. Just a sad, sad know it all troll who feels a need to comment on anything and everything. And disrespectful to boot. Billy no mates springs to mind 🙄

          • Yeah I knew my last post would completely confound you, bet you had to Google “Pharisee” 😆
            I have a strict rule, I’m only disrespectful to idiots who persist in publicly displaying their ignorance. If anything it’s a service to them, so that they might stop embarrassing themselves.

            “Billy no mates”? I find when people come out with completely unsupported speculation about me they are usually simply projecting their own inadequacies.

      • Mine did not even work…it’s seems my village did not have the coverage or some such issue. To be honest it would be a bit pointless getting a warning or nuclear attack as we are 2 miles from both a major military base and a major manufacturer of military hardware.

        • It’s mainly for things like local flooding, wildfires, or as happened when I was a student a radiation alert for everyone to stay indoors when the Mech End Dept blew-up.
          When I was in SF last-year they did a similar broadcast alert to the locals around Lake Tahoe when the particulates in the air reached dangerous levels due to the wildfires.

    • Be as critical of information as you want, but refusing to receive information isn’t smart it’s just an admission that you can’t think for yourself.

  10. But on a lighter note, that nasty racist anti-Semite Diane Abbot has been suspended from the Labour Party for being a nob jockey! Good in one respect due to her being an incompetent, oxygen starved clueless no mark, but bad for the Tories as every time she opened her slightly retarded mouth, another 5000 votes were gained for the Conservative Party!

  11. I wonder how many people have fully updated 4G or 5G phones? Apparently they are the only ones able to receive the alerts, so the rest of us with Nokia 3310’s and the like driven by steam are excluded.I don’t want or have a use for an all singing, all dancing, electronic device. Still living where I do I’ll be one of the first to watch Putin’s bucketful of instant sunshine at close range – Whooohooo!

      • I’m not sure this will ever be used for such things as flooding and fires..( let’s be honest you would just have people start ignoring the alert system if you used it for flooding as most people don’t even pay attention to present flood and weather alert systems)….the government did star work on on this in around 2012 did a load of pilots ( that worked ) and then just stopped. The focus was alway really on mass casualty causing events such as a major terror attack. The government just dusted it off because of the mad bastard in Russia…the whole used for weather alerts is just to tone down the civil defence element… because let’s be honest most people don’t remember the Cold War and it would freak them out if the government started giving out a “ now take down internal doors and prop them against an internal wall” vib.

        • Yes ongoing terror attacks, such as London Bridge ones, to warn people to stay away from the area or to lock themselves inside buildings is I think what galvanised them into action.
          However as the climate changes we are going to see worse and more frequent extreme weather, from flooding to wildfires. We’ve been lucky, the flooding incident in Germany in 2021 killed 196.

          I doubt if it’s due to Putin. There are no civilian nuclear bunkers in the U.K. so giving a warning of an imminent nuclear attack is pointless. It’s game over for humanity.

          • Well yes a nuclear exchange between the west and Russia is extinction time for humanity …( mainly due to starvation)…but I don’t necessarily think ( hope) a Russia NATO war would degrade to a full exchange…Russia has proven itself happy the throw conventional missiles at a nations population and any NATO Russia war would lead to missile strikes on the UK….

          • The problem is that if Russia fired ballistic missiles with conventional warheads say at London, could the U.K. afford to wait for the impact to determine if they were conventionally or nuclear armed? Or would the U.K. retaliate immediately with Trident?

            This is a long-standing issue, and I think one of the reasons behind the retirement of the nuclear armed Tomahawk cruise missile.

            If it decided to wait, the best use of an emergency broadcast would be to reassure the population immediately after the any attack that it was conventional rather than nuclear.

  12. I’m on Vodaphone, with updated software, and haven’t disabled alerts, and I got NOTHING. Phone was on and charged, and receiving 4G ! Yet many report that it’s just Three, but it isn’t! But I don’t suppose anyone really cares. WHY don’t they just make an APP and have us chose to sign into it! Far simpler! And can be area specific. Like the fires in Australia you can see where they are and then know if you are in danger etc!

  13. Dear oh dear half the folks on here would immediately go indoors and close the blinds if the Government told them sunshine was bad for them 😂

    Quick get yer phone oot 😂😂😂😂😂

    HM Gov everyone’s pal always looking out for you😉

    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧

      • Throw milk ?😳 no I was only a wee lad in the 80’s that must have been a 70’s thing ,like when they had Leonard Nimoy fronting a government propaganda video telling everyone the climate was cooling and everyone was going to freeze in a new ice age 😂 yes the shite Government comes away with would be funny were it not so serious in its implications for Joe public.

        They don’t give a fcuk about the man on the street but aye milk , paint , jam on windows it’s all the same comical nonsense the sheep lap up.

        🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧

  14. My alert came through at 14.59 but I assumed that was because they sent out the warning in batches to avoid overloading the system. I’d rather an alert came a minute early than a minute late.

  15. What is it with this country?
    It was a TEST.
    And I don’t give a s*** if it arrived at 14.59! Boo hoo. I’d rather be warned early than not at all.
    The other one I read of was complaints in case a victim of abuse is hiding a phone and their abuser hears the buzzing. Well. Yes, but lets prioritise the MAJORITY for once shall we?

  16. Ok. So you get an alert that a nuclear strike is on the way. What can you do? There’s no bunkers nearby. What few we use to have were decomissioned & sold off years ago. We have zero ABM defences. Most of the WW2 pillboxes around here which might have provided inadequate initial shelter fell into the seas in recent decades. Contingency plans have been neglected for decades & only ever looked after c5% of the population.

    The best way to protect ourselves is to have a strong conventional capability to back up out nukes so we deter anybody from trying it on in the 1st place & make our voice heard. Trembling, appeasing & disaming before agressive dictators shows what weak, incompetent leadership we have. Especially after fawning after their money for decades.

    • When I was based on Ascension Island, the Yanks carried out Missile tests a couple of time during my 6 month tour. They would declare a no transit zone over the Island , ship in a load of aircraft (Hawkeyes and a few C17s) and then lob over a missile at night, which would deploy its MIRV. A load of of us from the mess, would pop up to two boats (BBC land) and partake in drinks in their bar and watch them warheads (thankfully minus nukes) come down. A sight to behold and we joked that the next time we saw anything similar, we would need a strong sunblock.

  17. So the ‘we are in control’ test has been and gone. For the millions who do not have mobiles, is that a blessing?

    • The ones who produced the post office counters software ” Horizon “which led to broken marriages ,bankruptcy, false imprisonment and suicides . Morally they should give them no more work !

  20. I got the alert but for some reason my phone default is to announce the same via vibrating (oh err missus I know) rather than making a noise (I’ve now altered the settings of the same). Its a little haunting that say should the end come it would not be by sirens sounding the same WW2 style, just your phone making a noise at you. This is how the world ends…… and yeah I know its got lots of uses beyond the apocalyptic)

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