Millions of mobile phones across the UK blared a siren sound at the same time on Sunday as part of government efforts to better prepare for national emergencies.<\/p>\n
The nationwide drill caused England’s third ODI cricket match against South Africa to be paused while kick-off for a rugby league match was pushed back to avoid disruption.<\/p>\n
At 3:00 pm (1400 GMT), phones and tablets emitted the noise and vibrated for about 10 seconds, while users also received a message saying it was just a test.<\/p>\n
It was only the second test of the country’s national emergency alert system following the first in 2023.<\/p>\n
The government had in recent weeks embarked on a publicity drive to minimise any shock caused, including through announcements at rail stations and signs on motorways.<\/p>\n
It has used the system to issue real warnings to local areas five times in the past two years.<\/p>\n
In January, some 4.5 million people in Scotland and Northern Ireland received an alert during Storm Eowyn after a red weather warning was issued, meaning there was a risk to life.<\/p>\n
A 500-kilogramme (1,100-pound) unexploded Second World War bomb found in a back garden in southwest England triggered a warning to some 50,000 phones in February last year.<\/p>\n
The system is designed for use during the most likely emergencies to affect Britain where there is the possibility of a loss of life.<\/p>\n
Warnings would also be transmitted on television, radio and where appropriate by knocking on doors.<\/p>\n
Similar alerts are issued in the United States and Japan.<\/p>\n
Only devices connected to 4G or 5G networks received Sunday’s alert.<\/p>\n
It came as officials seek to strengthen the country’s resilience amid more frequent extreme weather events and concerns around Russia’s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The government published a “Resilience Action Plan” in July which also cited the upheaval of the coronavirus pandemic, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and cyber attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of mobile phones across the UK blared a siren sound at the same time on Sunday as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-127004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}