Emergency alert test was hit and miss

More glitches appeared in Canada’s new emergency alert system on Wednesday, where some wireless subscribers in B.C. received test signals and others did not.

Some smartphones users in B.C. didn’t receive the alerts, and Ian Lightbody with Emergency Management B.C. said it’s unclear why. “It doesn’t seem to be any consistent thread or theme in the phones that didn’t get the alert. It wasn’t a consistent carrier or it wasn’t a phone type or a software type,” he said.

Emergency Management B.C. will work with Pelmorex, the company that operates the system, and wireless carriers across the province to fix the issue, Lightbody said.

The tests misfired in Quebec on Monday and were hit and miss in Ontario. Wednesday’s tests were carried out in the other eight provinces, the Northwest Territories and Yukon. They appeared to go smoothly in Atlantic Canada, but there were problems elsewhere.

While wireless service providers were working to verify the handset-reception success rate for devices across Canada, Pelmorex also said the new system is in its infancy and not all wireless devices are compatible with the Alert Ready messaging system.

Test signals did sound on radio and TV stations Wednesday.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered wireless providers to implement the system to distribute warnings of imminent safety threats, such as tornadoes, floods, Amber Alerts or terrorism.