So apparently having to ask the operators nicely to send all their customers an SMS (as they did last year for the first lockdown) is not ideal, and it might be worth spending the money on setting up an alert system after all!
The downside is that people are more familiar with alternate communication methods with SMS or EMail where people can check their history, forward to people who need it.
Furthermore (like SMS) this requires a connection to the cell tower, which some tablets may not have even if they have internet.
But overall it seems like a good idea.
Some people don't have tablets OR cell phones. I doubt the objective is to reach 100% of all people.
Seems like the government just needs to provide RSS feeds per location, so that internet-only devices can receive the alerts too.
I'm actually surprised there is no easy way to access said alerts (whether emergency weather alerts or Amber) over the internet in the US last time I checked. Strange for a system whose sole purpose is to alert as many people as possible, but I bet some scum is rent-seeking by charging exorbitant amounts for these data feeds and certain companies are bound by law to display those alerts and have no choice but to pay that.
I just checked my phone settings (Android) and I have cell broadcasts enabled, but test messages are turned off. I wonder what message category they'll use.
There's nothing truly from scratch here (thankfully), other than integration at non-telecoms layer to get the system working.
I believe there is some interest (based on activity on GitHub around standards) in using some existing emergency alerting XML standards for the non-telecoms parts of the system too.
There's a lot of "my privacy" and "I didn't consent to this" etc going on sigh
"Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are short emergency messages from authorized federal, state, local, tribal and territorial public alerting authorities that can be broadcast from cell towers to any WEA‐enabled mobile device in a locally targeted area. Wireless providers primarily use cell broadcast technology for WEA message delivery."
https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integr...
Also, waiting until you need an emergency system is a really bad idea!