Just my $0.02...
Most users probably think that in the event of flooding their iPhone will allow them to walk on water anyway.
Europe is shuffling towards an international agreement on emergency alerts delivered to our mobile phones, but if current plans continue you might not ever know you received one. The idea is being discussed today at the European Emergency Number Association (EENA) with various industry and government reps in attendance, but …
Well since more than two-thirds of the entire EU are using Android handsets with apple amongst the remaining users of minority systems it is hardly worth bothering about them. The US has a long history of ignoring, or worse still, deliberately breaking existing standards and since they represent only some 5% of the global population this
unfortunate habit should not be allowed to affect the progress of the world as a whole.
" unfortunate habit should not be allowed to affect the progress of the world as a whole. "
Honestly, think about what you've just said there. You're advocating allowing people to die because they don't run fucking Android? Good man.
Besides, there are ten times as many plain voice+SMS phones as smartphones, and these will need to be compatible with whatever system is chosen.
"Honestly, think about what you've just said there. You're advocating allowing people to die because they don't run fucking Android? Good man."
Its almost as daft as expecting to survive a scenario where they actually need to use a nationwide broadcast facility. If the event is that bad, you may well be better off not knowing the meteorite is coming and the type of handset is completely irrelevant. Besides which, even if your mobile doesn;t get the message, all the other folks around you will get it on theirs.
It's not necessarily a nationwide broadcast; it's regional, which is a major reason to favour cell broadcast.
These messages aren't for apocalyptic events, they're for more mundane catastrophes like flood warnings, forest fires, major chemical spills and severe storms; and also for telling people that the hundred or so chemical-suited emergency workers they might see getting into trucks today are on their way to a combined services drill, and not the end of civilisation.
Quite right - and yes, Symbian also still has a massive installed userbase, particularly in Europe.
I mean, let's get this straight. It's okay for loads of companies and even Governments to produce "apps" only catering for the minority 10% of iphone users, but the moment they're left out, suddenly that's newsworthy? Sorry, who cares - now they know what it feels like.
At least Android is now getting support, but the other platforms hardly ever get support. And the situation was even more bizarre up until recently, when these other platforms were selling as much or more than iphone, but almost always ignored.
I say we should be thankful that a system caters for the majority first. Of course, it's nice to be inclusive of everyone - but first we should be criticising all the companies only producing apps for iphone (or at best, iphone and Android). Sadly it's not even a US vs Europe thing - even in the US, where despite being Apple's best market, Android outsells iphone at least 2 to 1 IIRC, there still seems to be far more hype and app-support for the minority of Apple users.
"Well since more than two-thirds of the entire EU are using Android handsets"
I think there's something wrong with your maths. The population of the EU is around 730 million and the Worldwide total number of Android DEVICES (not just phones) is 500 million. So unless all those Asian people who bought Android have just moved to Europe I think you need to go back to school. (If you've not left school yet ignore the last bit)
The same system that falls over at busy times like New Years Eve and people don't get messages until hours after they were sent and sometimes the network doesn't have to be that busy. I have had texts from friends of mine asking where I was and how long I was going to be arrive before the text they had sent an hour earlier telling me where they would be.
Not great for an emergency system
The first thing I do when I get a cellphone is to switch on Cell Broadcast reception which I like to think of it as Teletext for phones- all it does it push useless info like the current cell tower name and ID number to the device. At least, that's what my telco uses Cell Broadcast for. The device then proceeds to scroll the information on the main screen. Useless, but nonetheless fun to have around.
My Android handset has full support for the service, as does my old trusty Nokia N97, And as I recall it, my old HTC TyTN does too. So why doesn't the iPhone?
You answered your own question, when you said "all it does is push useless info like the current cell tower name and ID number".
The article says iPhone has "some support" for it, presumably it isn't really turned on because no one is using it for anything useful. If that changes, it can be turned on with a software update. Given that "half the phones" won't sound an audible alert (which seems a prerequisite to be useful in emergency situations) it isn't exactly a problem unique to Apple. It's actually more of a problem for the phones are forgotten by the vendor once they have your money and may never get an update.
The message goes to the cell, not the mobile. Each message carries a topic number and the mobile might be configured to receive the message's topic number or it might not but as it is things aren't set up on the billing side to bill for a message which might or might not be received by a group of customers.
The most famous topic is 050 which holds the cell's name and was used by Vodafone and O2 to display the landline dialling code covered by the cell, back in the day when there were tariffs which had cheaper local calls from mobiles (which was a bit silly but anyway).
As Jobs would have said,
Update your handset software to support existing standards. Not that big of a deal.
Re: "CB has language support". This derailed my brain for a moment, as I couldn't see how Citizen's Band radio could offer any sort of support, nor anti-support, for languages...
This does, of course, highlight an interesting thing I'm seeing more of these days - repurposing of abbreviations...
So now we have CB, but the one before that was SDLC. The little corner of my brain that responds first to that says "Synchronous Data Link Control" rather than the more modern meaning, which I *presume* refers to "Software Development Life Cycle". (I "presume" because it's not automatically clear that anyone actually knows what these abbreviations actually stand for anymore so I have to work it out from context. Who these days remembers that the "A" in "VGA" does not stand for "Adapter"? (Well, I do, but I used, many years ago, a PS/2 model 50, back when PS2 was merely an incorrect spelling of Personal System/2.))
And why an "expert" who is in fact, almost completely wrong?
For a start, SMS is not guaranteed delivery, it's best-effort and even has settings for how long to keep trying - between one hour and a week or so.
I think this marketeer has confused "has a delivery receipt" with "always delivers", an easy mistake for the hard-of-thinking.
SMS is fundamentally not much different to email.
Cell Broadcast was designed with this purpose in mind (at least, according to the gnarled O2 engineers at the Airwave conference a few years back).
Mandate that all handsets must support it, and even the idiot USians will push out a firmware update within six months. The towers all support it already anyway - even if a lot of them have nothing to say right now.
I agree, they seem to keep finding experts with an interest in squashing it.
>> Mandate that all handsets must support it, and even the idiot USians will push out a firmware update within six months.
Exactly, make it mandatory and all new phones will come with it - no manufacturer (not even Apple) will be prepared to pull out of Europe. And any manufacturer that cares will push it to older devices with an update - though I expect Apple (and a handful of others) will see it as an opportunity to sell you a newer bit of bling.
You mean like the RDS-TMC 'Air raid warning' messages? ...
El Reg past reports...
Ah, nothing like having a STANDARD and complying with it...
When is the ITU going to publish a roadmap that will converge the existing "standards" used around the world. Technology is advancing, and while the Merkins (and othes) use a different system from GSM now, they will replace their infrastructure over the coming years (have done already for LTE) so at this point you can start to incorporate a GLOBAL standard.
(And I'm not staying it should be GSM, just that the ITU needs to get a roadmap agreed that in 10 years it will be converged) (and don't give me excuses about bandwidth and frequencies - that's part of the ROADMAP).