Full retesting of new mobile alert system months away
It could be this time next year before Canada’s new mobile emergency alert system is tested again on a wide scale, as the players involved in last week’s failed tests figure out what went wrong.
As an Amber Alert sounded for a missing boy in Ontario on Monday, officials said the warning system is up and running, but public expectations that all compatible devices connected to a wireless network should receive alerts may be too high.
The system, which was supposed to be fully operational nationwide under regulator orders by April 6, was put to the test across most of the country last week.
The first test, on May 7 in Quebec, didn’t sound at all due to a coding error, which the system operator said was fixed within a couple of hours. Later that day, some test alerts were heard and felt on mobile devices in Ontario, but many wireless subscribers didn’t receive any signals.
On May, 9, testing conducted in Atlantic Canada appeared to go as hoped, while there was sporadic success across western provinces, as well as in Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
Pelmorex, which operates the Alert Ready system, said while expectations for the test results may have been high, those involved in conducting the live tests learned valuable lessons.
“If everyone thought their phone was going to go off, maybe there was an expectation there that wasn’t met,” said Paul Temple, the company’s senior vicepresident of regulatory and strategic affairs.
“But in terms of the technical aspects , I think it was exactly what we needed to do.”
The company, which also owns The Weather Network, said it confirmed that all of the alert test messages it distributed were successfully transmitted to wireless, or “last mile” service providers.
“In Ontario and all the tests on Wednesday, we got acknowledgment messages back from all of the carriers that they had received the test messages,” Temple said.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered wireless providers to implement the system to distribute warnings of imminent safety threats, including severe weather, such as tornadoes and floods, as well as terrorist threats and Amber Alerts.
In most provinces and territories, Pelmorex provides a platform that emergency officials use to create alert messages. Pelmorex then delivers the alerts to TV, radio, cable, satellite and wireless providers.
But the company has no way of knowing whether the service providers actually distribute the messages, except for what it sees or hears being broadcast. Everything is automated and is supposed to take just a few seconds once the alert messages are written and delivered.
If there was a real emergency warranting an alert, the system is activated, even if many devices might still not receive an alert signal, he said.
“If there was a threat-to-life warning, the carriers are connected and they would get that message and pass it on to whatever the area is that is affected by the incident.”
In fact, devices buzzed and sounded for an Amber Alert in Ontario on Monday, although it wasn’t known whether all devices that were supposed to receive it actually did.
The alert was issued by the Ontario Provincial Police, who were searching for Gabriel McCallum, an eight-year-old boy missing in the Thunder Bay region. It was later cancelled after he was found safe.