It’s a bit odd it’s taken this long for the UK to have a national alerts system. As early as 2013, the government was running trials across the country to test the possibility of using public phone networks to send emergency messages at a local or regional scale. The first such trials, in North Yorkshire, Glasgow and Suffolk, were deemed a success.

“Responders remain very keen to see the implementation of a national mobile alert system,” a 2014 report into the trials concluded. “The system would be an effective way of getting people to take specific protective action during an emergency. Whilst a significant challenge, there was consensus that it was possible to issue alerts to the public within 15 minutes of a decision being made.”

Instead, nothing happened for almost a decade. Slow and steady, eh?

Boston-based Everbridge is one of the companies providing the technology behind today’s alert. Lorenzo Marchetti, the company’s public affairs manager, explained the requirements of any such system:

A public alerting system should encompass three key elements– communication, synchronization and analysis of data. For example, information might come from a weather forecast, a traffic report or through social media. Analysis of this data gives authorities a broad picture of what could occur and allows them to communicate and synchronize their actions. They can then disseminate this across specific locations or to an entire nation while ensuring that they reach the targeted people in the area. This means that effective public warning platforms can integrate several delivery methods such as radio or TVs, depending on the context of the deployment, in addition to the cell broadcast capacity.

Emergency alerts don’t just benefit citizens but are also essential for giving information and directions to the emergency services, helping them understand where to go and how to direct people away from danger.

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People has issued its own warning for those who use bluetooth hearing aids. The alert will be sent out at the “maximum possible volume”, it says, and those who use hearing aids that connect directly to their phones may find it uncomfortable, painful, or even dangerous to experience.

If you are concerned you could:

Avoid wearing headphones during the test

Disconnect your hearing aids from Bluetooth before the emergency alert test

Avoid being too close to your device when the emergency alert test takes place

Avoid crowded spaces where the noise may be amplified by multiple devices.

Why is the alert system needed?

Another group of people who may benefit from a reminder to turn off their phones are those in the middle of a live broadcast.

With Newcastle playing Tottenham today in front of a crowd of around 50,000, St George’s Day events up and down England, and the normal plethora of TV news and live radio, there’s going to be more than a few red faces as broadcasters hurriedly race to stop. the warning sound.

If you want to know more than is strictly necessary about the technical journey behind today’s test, civil servant Frazer Rhodes, who led the emergency alerts process at the Environment Agency, has written a three part blog series about the development process. Did you know the first iteration of the alerts was known as the “fainting goat rental”?

We had test messages for Alpacas, Capybara and in this case, overly curious llamas. None of these messages were created or sent on the production service of course.

Initial experiments were aimed at seeing what users would actually do when confronted with an emergency alert, achieved by asking them to read a fake webpage and then popping up a mock-up. One lesson? They frequently worried it was a scam:

Users were initially mistrusting of the message using language such as scam and pop-up. The inclusion of GOV.UK helped provide some reassurance.

The sound was generally the first thing that attracted their attention and often their first response was to silence this.

The consumer rights organization, Which?, has warned Brits of a heightened risk of scam texts immediately surrounding the emergency alert at 3pm today.

“Events like this can be a magnet for scammers looking to take advantage of the confusion,” the organization said. “Anything that asks you to take action from the alert is a scam.

Here’s the (very) recently crowned Deputy PM, Oliver Dowden, explaining what’s going to happen today:

For some, being unable to easily turn off the alert might be simply annoying. For others, it could be dangerous. The Citizens Advice Bureau has put together a handy graphic aimed at people experiencing domestic violence, to remind them that the alert could expose a phone hidden in your house “just in case”.

The graphic has gone viral on most social networks, so hopefully those who need the reminder have already seen it, but if this affects you, please, remember to turn off the hidden phone before the alert sounds at 3pm. Muting it or disabling notifications will not suffice.

In case it isn’t clear, this isn’t a normal text message. It’s supposed to sound from any mobile phone connected to a network at 3pm exactly. It should make an ear-splitting shriek whether or not you’ve got your phone turned on to silent mode.

And even if you’ve managed to find the settings to turn off “extreme alerts” and “severe alerts” in your phone’s preferences menu, this warning will still sound: it’s a higher level of priority (known in other countries as a “presidential alert” but rebranded here to a “government alert”) that, on many devices, simply cannot be disabled.

The only way to escape this is to turn your device off entirely, or, if you have one, to remove the sim card to prevent it connecting to a network.

Emergency notification to land on UK phones at 3pm