Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the UK trialling emergency alerts in nationwide test

People in the UK were surprised by unexpected alarms from their phones in a test of the national emergency alert system.

Yesterday, people's phones vibrated and sounded for about 10 seconds in the second test of the system.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gavin Gray are UK corresponders with us even in Gevin
hither Heather, do you reckon the government's really going to
go ahead with this barex IDEA?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Well, yes I do, because the UK is already using
former army and RAF bases in order to house migrants
while they're having their applications reviewed. But certainly now the
government really stressing that they are looking to expand this notion.

(00:28):
There's even talk of some use of former industrial sites
and even talk for using some warehousing as well. So
the government deciding to try to clear out the number
of people housed in hotels a taxpayer funded accommodation. At
the moment, thirty two thousand asylum seekers are housed in hotels,

(00:49):
and Heather, it's wrong if you're thinking all these are
cheap budget hotels. Some of them are very nice hotels,
and it is costing millions of New Zealand dollars a
day to fund them. And of course it's been extremely
in the headlines say very controversial and people are getting
very fed up, and I think the government is recognized
this is one of the big topics for the next

(01:11):
general election. A vote winner or a vote loser to
get this sorted out. So the government's looking at two
former military sites, a former RAF base in Essex down
in the southeast and also a former military base in Kent,
also in the southeast. In other words, where so many
of the migrants are arriving. Indeed, we've just heard that

(01:31):
on the first day of the new Home Secretary, the
new woman in charge of the migrant problem, more than
one thousand people arrived. Almost one thousand, one hundred arrived
on her first fall day and the job. That means
thirty thousand have arrived by small votes so far this
calendar year, and that is a new record for this

(01:53):
point in the year. So Labor the party of government
realizing something has to be done quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, totally. How's the emergency alerts on the mobile phones going?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, they seemed to go pretty well. So my phone
yesterday afternoon our time, at three pm sounded with an
alert for ten seconds, along with roughly eighty two million
other phones. This was the second testing of a national
system for sending emergency alerts to mobile phones. It's a
way of people being reached really, really quickly, and this

(02:26):
was the second test. The alerts are designed for crisis
where there's an imminent danger to life, such as during
extreme weather events or a terror attack. It works on
separate phone masks, so you don't have to alert everyone
around the country at the same time. You just nominate
the phone mask you want to contact, as it were,
or the area, and then you can contact people in

(02:46):
that area in a matter of seconds. Now, in the
first trial, which is back in twenty twenty three, some
received multiple messages, others didn't get any message at all.
On this time, I think it's been a much better
test anyway, on the UK's four G and five G
networks received the message even if they were not connected
to mobile data or Wi Fi, and that, as I said,

(03:09):
eighty two phone eighty two million phones in total, it
seemed to work better. However, some people report they didn't
get the message for fifteen to twenty minutes after it
was supposed to go out, and so that's obviously going
to be something that the government needed to work on.
And this is something here that's certainly getting a great
deal of interest from the government, just how to get

(03:30):
hold of people quickly should there be alerts. It's been
used in the past fourth storms, but also in one
instance when they discover a five hundred kiloground World War
II bomb unexploded in a city center at the southwest.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Doesnt Gevin get Google's a little bit poorer today, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Ah? Well, it certainly should be with what's happened, but
it is appealing the judgment. So the European Union has
find Google at five and a half billion in New
Zealand dollars, the EU alleging they are abusing air power
in the ad tech sector. So what they're saying is
the technology which determines which adverts should be placed online

(04:12):
and where, is, according to the EU, being rigged in
Google's favor. The European Commission saying that the tech giant
had breached competition laws by favoring its own products for
displaying online ads to the detriment of its rivals. However,
Google says the decision is wrong and says it will appeal,
and Donald Trump has weighed in, the US president attacking

(04:33):
the decision, saying in a post on social media, it
was very unfair and threatening to launch an investigation over
European tech practices that could lead to tariffs. I think
the timing of this fine is very interesting. Just a
few weeks, of course after they've agreed between the EU
and the US a trade deal, but certainly earlier this

(04:54):
week the Commission denying that timing was deliberate and as
part of their findings at Google had intentionally boosted its
own advertising exchange ADX over competing exchanges where ads are
bought and sold in real time. So I think this
is one we're going to hear more of when the
appeal comes to Fruition.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Thanks Devin, appreciate it. Gavin Gray, UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
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