Years of planning have gone into the 10-second alarm that will sound on up to 25 million phones around Australia on Monday, July 27, but officials will be holding their breath in case of unpredictable mishaps for the AusAlert test.
The new national warning system will use the same broadcast technology that operates in more than 30 countries, many of which found gremlins in the system during their testing over the past decade.
New Zealanders were awoken in the middle of the night, Germans were bemused when the message did not arrive and surprised when it sounded 20 minutes late, Welsh speakers saw a spelling error in the alert’s text and millions of UK and Canadian residents missed out altogether.
Australia’s test is scheduled to sound at 2pm on Monday July 27, with a text message that reads: “This is a TEST alert of AusAlert, Australia’s new emergency warning system. NO ACTION IS REQUIRED.”
Fingers and toes will be crossed that is what happens. But mistakes may be inevitable and are, in fact, needed to iron out the kinks in such a big system, says Queensland University of Technology associate professor Paula Dootson.
“There’s teething problems with any new technology. There’ll be technical challenges, there’ll be operational challenges, we will see it all,” said Dootson, who studies emergency communications.
“We will figure out where the black spots are, and what phones we can’t reach people on, if they’re on older models, as well as language accessibility.”
The new national alert system will be used to issue a wide range of warnings, including for natural disasters, threats to public safety such as shooting incidents, as well as health and biosecurity threats like a disease outbreak.
Experts have said that victim-survivors of domestic violence and others who rely on secret or hidden phones could be endangered by the alert. If you do not wish the phone to sound, it should be switched off at least one hour before the test and remain off for at least one hour after.
There is no plan to immediately replace existing state-run warning systems, including for natural disasters, which will continue to operate in tandem with AusAlert over the high-risk summer period.
AusAlert uses cell broadcast technology not the SMS relied on by states to issue warnings. Cell broadcast sends messages from selected mobile phone towers to every compatible device within that towers’ range.
By selecting which towers transmit, the message can be targeted to people who need to see it, often down to a street-by-street level of accuracy.
Targeted messages can boost people’s confidence in emergency warnings, Dootson said.
“If people are alerted to a flood that is nowhere near them, that can create distrust in the efficacy of the system. The closer you can get, the more relevant you can make the message, the more people will trust it and actually take action.”
Cell broadcast does not need phone numbers to reach a device, and it is not subject to network congestion that affects SMS. With cell broadcast alerts, all phones entering the broadcast area will receive the message for however long the alert remains active.
Dootson said it was important to dispel misconceptions about privacy concerns with cell broadcast technology.
“It just sends a ping out to a device in a geographic fenced area to say there’s a threat. A lot of people think that they’re identified as an individual. That’s absolutely not what’s happening.”
Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain said the national test was intended to iron out any issues. A relatively small number of people with older model phones may not receive the message, she said.
“The purpose of testing is to find and fix issues now, so AusAlert is ready to help keep Australians safe during real emergencies,” she said.
“Some people may not receive the alert if their device is not compatible, does not have the latest software, is switched off, in aeroplane mode, is outside mobile coverage, or not connected to a mobile tower at the time.”
Testing troubles
When Germany tested its cell broadcast warning system in December 2022, the message scheduled to be sent in the morning arrived 20 minutes late to many phones. An “all clear” follow-up message scheduled for later in the day also failed to broadcast to many phones. Later tests in 2023 and 2025 revealed issues with certain phones screening out the alert due to user settings, despite the system being designed to notify all phones.
In the UK in April 2023, up to 10 million phones missed out on the national emergency test message, among other issues for some who did not receive the message if they were only connected to a Wi-Fi network.
In Canada in May 2018, a coding error prevented the national test being sent to millions of residents in Quebec.
Many New Zealanders woke in fright in the early hours of October 3, 2017 when cell broadcast technology accidentally sent its message at 1.30am, with the government agency responsible blaming the rude timing on its European technology contractor.
Despite the growing global uptake of cell broadcast systems, Dootson expects it will compliment rather than replace existing systems.
“Landlines will be here forever, radio will be here forever. There’ll always be scenarios where things go wrong, power goes out, systems go down. We need as much redundancy in our communication processes as possible.
“We know people go to the authority for the trusted information, we know they make sense of that information with their community groups on social media, and we know some people just prefer to pick up the phone, so adding one extra channel will not mean getting rid of anything else.”
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Mike Foley is the climate and energy correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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