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ARCHIVED - Spain prepares to test its new emergency alert mobile system
Anyone using a Spanish mobile number may receive test messages in the coming days
Following several months of preparation, the Civil Protection in Spain will begin trialling its ES-Alert system, and anyone using a Spanish mobile phone number should be prepared to receive some test messages.
The project aims to alert people via their smartphones of any impending emergency or catastrophe in their area, and the test phase of the system will begin on October 24, with some mobile phone customers receiving messages that make their device beep and vibrate until they’ve viewed the alert.
Users can rest assured that no actual emergency situation is underway; rather, the Ministry of the Interior is testing the software between October 24 and November 16 in every autonomous community in Spain to make sure it’s working correctly.
Smartphone owners need do nothing more than open the message, then ignore it.
The testing schedule is as follows:
October 24: Cantabria, Andalusia and Asturias.
October 27: Extremadura, Valencian Community and Galicia.
November 2: Murcia, the Balearic Islands, Madrid, Aragon, Navarra and Catalonia.
November 10: Basque Country, Castilla y León, Canary Islands and Ceuta.
November 16: Castilla-La Mancha, La Rioja and Melilla.
In addition to alerting the user through vibration and sound, the messages will contain written information about the nature of the emergency and directions on how to react. Although the initial idea was to use an SMS alert system, the Ministry finally decided to use Cell Broadcast technology, which is based on the broadcast of radio messages.
"Among the advantages of the system are its immediacy, the fact that it occupies very little bandwidth and that it works automatically for all the devices that are within the coverage of an antenna, but to receive the alert it is necessary to have a smartphone,” the technical development team explained.
Image: Pixabay
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