Starting on April 6, earthquake alerts issued by the Central Weather Bureau would be transmitted to telecoms within 10 seconds, the bureau said in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday.
It currently takes an average of 15 seconds for telecoms to receive the alerts that the bureau issues when it detects an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 4.5 on land or off the coast, the bureau said.
The new alert system would shorten the transmission time to 10 seconds, the bureau said, adding that it still takes another three seconds for mobile phone users to receive the alert message.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said that the earthquake alert system in Japan can transmit messages faster than the one in Taiwan, as the messages go through only two stops along the transmission route instead of six, before reaching mobile phone users.
Taiwan’s alert system would run faster if it had fewer stops along the transmission route, but the false alarm rate would inevitably be higher, to which the public might have trouble adjusting, Central Weather Bureau Director-General Yeh Tien-chiang (葉天降) said.
The bureau is studying reducing the transmission time using the same number of stops, he said.
Japan’s earthquake alert system can send the first alert message within about six seconds of detecting a quake, but people there know that they would not receive the most accurate information on the earthquake’s magnitude and intensity until the sixth or seventh alert message, which would also take about 10 seconds, the bureau said.
While it would take 10 seconds for Taiwan’s alert system to transmit the first alert message when it detects a large earthquake, the information in the message would be about 99 percent accurate, the bureau said, adding that Taiwanese might not find it acceptable to receive the full information in multiple messages.
Asked if the transmission time between the telecoms and mobile phone users could be shortened to under three seconds given that telecoms would soon launch 5G services, National Communications Commission Chief Secretary Hsiao Chi-hung (蕭祈宏) said that 4G and 5G systems would coexist in the initial stages of 5G service, and the transmission speed might not be faster than it is now.
It also takes Japanese telecoms about three seconds to transmit messages to their subscribers, Hsiao said.
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