Starting in April, subscribers to 4G telecommunication services are to start receiving messages from the public warning system when a natural disasters strikes, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
The establishment of the system was proposed after northeastern Japan was devastated on March 11, 2011, by a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a tsunami.
The commission said that the system would allow 4G telecom carriers to instantly send warnings to millions of users in areas that would be affected by natural disasters, so that they can take immediate actions to protect themselves.
Lo Chin-hsien (羅金賢), director of the commission’s Department of Network Infrastructure, said that the nation was able to use a location-based service (LBS) to send warnings to people who are within some of the targeted areas.
However, the previous system was only able to deliver a maximum of 2,000 messages per minute, making it unable to handle the massive demand of a large-scale natural disaster, Lo said.
Using 4G technology would allow the system to send warnings to millions of people, as if they hear the information on the radio or see it on TV, Lo said.
Lo said that first-hand information on disasters would be provided by the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) and other government agencies, which would be switched to formats set for disaster-related messages before being sent to the cell broadcasting center.
The center would then send the message to 4G carriers, which would broadcast the message to people in their networks, Lo said.
Lo added that the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction has set different codes for different disaster-related messages so that people know if they need to respond quickly upon receiving the messages.
He said that the most urgent ones would be of national-level emergencies, which includes major earthquakes and any life-threatening disasters.
Lo said that 4G users would not be able to turn off their smartphone notifications for messages of national-level emergencies and that their devices would notify them about the messages through text, sound and vibration.
People can choose to turn off the notifications if the message is not about an imminent disaster, he said.
Despite the ability to broadcast disaster-related information to millions of people, Lo said that it would still take time for the CWB and other agencies to process the information before the messages would be sent out.
Using the example of the 921 Earthquake in 1999, Lo said that it took about 30 seconds for the information to be transmitted from the CWB to users. While people living far away from the epicenter could seek protection after receiving the message, those living near the epicenter would not have time to do so, he said.
The messages cannot be sent to areas that do not have base stations to receive 4G signals, Lo added.
The commission is scheduled to complete the nationwide testing of the system at the end of this month, adding that it needs another month to certify the test results, Lo said.
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