Major Carriers Had Few Problems During National Alerting Test

had no difficulties receiving FEMA’s integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS) alert. Test alert messages broadcast via LTE, UMTS and GSM “were transmitted 14.411 seconds after receipt from FEMA IPAWS due to mapping requirements imposed on these three broadcast technologies by the significantly larger database underlying T-Mobile’s nationwide coverage footprint,” the carrier said: “This represents an improvement of over 20 seconds from the 2021 test. Test Alert Messages broadcast via 5G were transmitted in under one (1) second.” T-Mobile also observed “an anomaly” for subscribers using some handsets running the Android R or newer operating system (OS). “Affected devices had the device language set to English but presented the alert in both English and Spanish,” T-Mobile said: “The anomaly was caused by an inadvertent overwrite of the logic in the device OS by the OS vendor, affecting National Alerts. T-Mobile is not aware of an instance in which this anomaly delayed or prevented receipt of the Test Alert Message.” Verizon said the system largely worked. Verizon had a delay of 1.663 seconds between the receipt of the test alert message from FEMA IPAWS and transmission to subscribers. “Verizon does not consider this a ‘delay,’ ‘complication,’ or ‘anomaly,’” it said: “The processing time between receipt of the alert and transmission to subscribers simply results from the large number of cell sites in our network, and the need for the two mated [cell broadcast entities] facilities to efficiently coordinate the delivery of both the English and Spanish language versions of the alert across all those sites.” Verizon also reported complaints and inquiries to its customer care channels that indicated “some cases where subscribers may not have received the alert due to the local RF propagation environment, or where the user’s device was operating in Wi-Fi mode only.” AT&T said some customers in Texas didn’t receive an alert, because of a fiber cut affecting 30 cellsites. “AT&T did not observe any instances of excessive delay in the network and does not consider the lapse of one second between the receipt of the alert from IPAWS and the transmission of the alert to subscribers as in any way delayed or abnormal,” it said. AT&T also said it surveyed more than 1,000 employees about their experience: More than 99.3% “received and reviewed the English version of the alert,” 85% “received and reviewed the alert within 1 minute or less. And 90% … received and reviewed the alert within 3 minutes or less.” AT&T also worked with a handset vendor in four states to test the alert on 77 handsets. “Of these, 100% of the devices received the English version of the alert and 97.4% of these devices received the test alert within 1 minute,” AT&T said. Also, 42 of the devices “were enabled to receive Spanish alerts and 100% of the devices received the alert in Spanish and 100% of these devices received the alert within [one] minute.”