My empirical study for this is as follows:
I have 7 phones on and around my desk, of which are 3 iOS devices (4s and newer), and 4 android (4.4 and up all different manufacturers, sony, samsung, hmd, one plus brand) with different or no operator sim installed and all but the 4s got it.
I guess it is cell related in that case.
edit: the 4s was subscribed to the kpn network. Others were not or I can no longer check. Strange thing is I'm getting them first through my personal phone's second sim (vodafone, primary is t-mobile).
Are those on KPN? If so then that is interesting, if not then that is pretty much in line with the article. SMS and voice traffic within the KPN network is just fine, going outside or dialing in is not working and SMS traffic from the outside in also does not work (so far).
No SIM is only interesting in sofar as those phones have attached themselves to the KPN network, they could choose any network for emergency services.
My wife and I both have iPhones on KPN. No alert. We have an old Moto X 2013 that we use when we have to check our old German T-Mobile numbers for missed calls or SMSes. That phone did get an alert. Thrice.
It is worrying that these alerts do not seem to work correctly, since it is supposed to replace the 'the air-raid alarm' (in 2021).
It's also bad that these messages are pretty annoying _and_ spammed to the point where people are turning the NL alert messages off. Last week too, there was a big fire in the region I'm from, and we received ~5 messages through the NL Alert system warning us about the fire and telling us to keep windows closed in the space of 20 minutes. Seems excessive to me and dangerous should the boy at one point cry about an actual wolf.
Is it anything like the American system, which overrides your phone’s volume settings? I was driving in the US last year in a pretty amazing thunderstorm and a hideous alarm went off in the car. I thought I’d crashed the thing.
Pulling over and investigating, we discovered my phone ‘alerting’ me to the heavy rain. Err ... cheers. If it did that more than about twice a year I’d be turning it off for sure.
Ofcourse, I am not advocating for turning the system off. But I would tread more cautiously with something like this if a) it is very easily turned off if perceived as of net negative value in a spur of the moment decision, but difficult to opt back in, b) the security of the system as a whole depends on at least a few people in any given group at any time of day receiving the messages, especially if these technical issues persist with random arrivals of message delivery and c) the scope of the system is expected to expand in the near future.
You have a very valid point. Systems like this should work flawlessly and should only be activated when it is really necessary otherwise by the time we need them they'll be switched off by people that get tired of being woken up.
Case in point: smoke alarms that wake up half the neighborhood when their batteries need replacement.
My phone is 3G, and it does not work, only internal. Old Nokia, but I have access to lots of other phones and so far all KPN network phones have issues of one form or another.
But interesting that there are 3G/4G differences. Have you tried to switch back?
KPN now reports that the problem is 'only on the 4G network', but I'm pretty sure that that is not the case for all subscribers (I'm exclusively on 3G and also have problems), also, their advice to reconfigure phones to connect to 3G only could easily backfire because the 3G network is not capable of dealing with all the traffic if everybody switches.
