23-04-2023, 10:09 AM
I'd bet money on it working on older phones anyway. The technical standards are not that new and I can't imagine why they are saying you need to be running an OS from the 2020s
The 4G/5G cutoff is likely correct though, no point doing the work to enable alerts on 3G which is largely going away soon anyway, or on 2G which hardly anyone would be using at this point.
As for the UK's timeline on this, it seems to be post-COVID. I think they saw how long it took to send out that COVID text and realised they needed something better. It was looked into about 10 years ago too but they decided not to proceed.
If you're in airplane mode or out of cellular coverage (or in the UK's case, disabled the alerts - other countries don't allow an opt out) then you won't receive it.
The 4G/5G cutoff is likely correct though, no point doing the work to enable alerts on 3G which is largely going away soon anyway, or on 2G which hardly anyone would be using at this point.
As for the UK's timeline on this, it seems to be post-COVID. I think they saw how long it took to send out that COVID text and realised they needed something better. It was looked into about 10 years ago too but they decided not to proceed.
If you're in airplane mode or out of cellular coverage (or in the UK's case, disabled the alerts - other countries don't allow an opt out) then you won't receive it.