UK telecoms alert test failure raises concerns

A UK Government test of a nationwide emergency alert on smartphones will be reviewed after many users said they did not receive the alert at all, while others claimed it arrived early.

While millions of people across the UK heard an alarm on their phones at 15:00 BST on Sunday, many others did not.

The alarm was part of a government test that could be used to alert the public about dangerous situations including fires, flooding or terror attacks.

The alarm lasted for around 10 seconds on 4G and 5G devices emitting a loud, buzzing sound with the words the words “severe alert” flashing up on their phones’ screens.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson acknowledged that the alert did not reach some mobile phones, adding it “will be looking at this as part of our review of the test”.

The department also said engineers had spotted a trend of phone functions failing to work afterwards, adding that officials were in the early stages of analysing the results of the trial run.

A government spokesperson said: “We have effectively completed the test of the UK-wide emergency alerts system, the biggest public communications exercise of its kind ever done. We are working with mobile network operators to review the outcome and any lessons learned.”

The mobile network Three said it was investigating why many of its users failed to receive an emergency alert, while some users on O2 and Vodafone also reported problems with the alert system.

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

Users whose phones have not received a software update in more than two years, and those who were not within reach of a 4G or 5G network were not expected to successfully receive it, while others opted to deactivate the system prior to the test.

The test came after more than a decade of working on a national alert system. In 2013, the government began initial regional alert tests, and published a review the following year, recommending plans to move forward with a national system.

However, the plan faltered due to cost concerns, with reports claiming it would cost around £1 million to rollout a national alerts service. Following Covid-19, however, the government decided to revive the plans after it was forced to work with the mobile networks to send a text message to all 85m phones in the country announcing lockdown.

Speaking on the BBC on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden denied the alerts system was an example of government overreach, saying the system “could be the sound that saves your life” in the future.

He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “If you look at countries around the world, whether it is the United States, Canada, Japan and elsewhere, they have emergency alerts on phones as another tool in the toolkit of keeping people alerted during an emergency.”