The Central Weather Bureau yesterday sent a test warning message to cellphone users nationwide at 9:21am to test the one-to-many cell broadcast service to mark National Disaster Prevention Day and the 18th anniversary of the 921 Earthquake.
However, many people did not receive the message from the government-funded public warning system (PWS), most of whom are Chunghwa Telecom customers, according to the National Communications Commission and Wang Yi-wen (王怡文), deputy director of the Executive Yuan’s Office of Disaster Management.
Many people left complaints on President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Facebook page after she asked if netizens had received the test warning.
Commission spokesman Weng Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said people who filed complaints about not receiving the message were all Chunghwa Telecom 4G clients, mostly in Taipei and Nantou County, although no such complaints have been received from its 3G service subscribers.
There have also been no complaints from subscribers to Taiwan Mobile, Far EasTone Telecommunications, Asia-Pacific Telecom or Taiwan Star’s 3G or 4G services, Weng said.
Chunghwa Telecom has been asked to check if there were any abnormalities with its system settings, he said.
Chunghwa Telecom has apologized and said there was a problem with signal decoding of its 4G system in some regions.
However, it successfully delivered a tsunami warning message to all its subscribers living in coastal areas at 10am, the company said.
Previous cell broadcast drills were conducted in different areas on a rotational basis, and the delivery rates were between 80 percent and 90 percent, Wang said.
Yesterday was the first national cell broadcast drill, she said, adding that the Office of Disaster Management and the commission would form a task force to identify causes of the system malfunction.
“We are looking into the problem and we will come up with the solution as soon as the problem is identified,” Executive Yuan spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
Chunghwa Telecom was also asked to ensure that the PWS can function normally under emergency situations by enhancing its test runs in specific regions next week.
If subscribers did not get the message, it was possible that they were not in the coverage area when the warning was being broadcast, Weng said.
It was also possible that people happened to be talking on the phone for more than two minutes when the message was delivered or their mobile phones do not support the PWS operation, he said.
To receive a PWS message, a cellphone user has to activate the government alert function in their cellphone’s general phone settings. In addition to a warning message, an alarm will sound to alert users.
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