The FR-ALERT system arrives on iPhone with an operator update

You received a carrier settings update on your iPhone that enabled EN-ALERT. This is a new population alert system that allows notifications to be sent to the mobile phones of people present in an area facing danger in France. It’s been available in the US and other countries for years now. France has fallen behind.

FR-ALERT activates on phones

As explains it the Ministry of the Interior, this system makes it possible to complete the existing population alert systems by making it possible to alert, through telephones, of the nature and location of a danger or threat, and to indicate the actions and behaviors to adopt to guard against these dangers or reduce exposure to the effects of these threats as much as possible. Notifications may convey information about:

• the nature of the risk (a fire, a flood, an industrial accident, etc.);
• the authority issuing the alert;
• the location of the danger (establishment, district, municipality, agglomeration, department, etc.);
• the attitude to adopt (stay at home, evacuate the area, etc.);
• if necessary a link to obtain additional information on an official website.

In detail, the FR-ALERT device can alert the population for safety on:

• Natural events: flood, storm and cyclone, fire, tsunami, volcanic eruption…
• Biological and chemical: pollution, gas leak, nuclear incident, etc.
• Sanitary: epidemic, pandemic, agri-food incident, etc.
• Technological and industrial: failure of telecommunications means, serious accidents on road, rail or air networks, industrial incident, etc.
• Serious public security event, terrorist act

Two technologies in place, including Cell Broadcast

Two techniques are used for FR-ALERT. The first is Cell Broadcast. It only takes a few seconds for everyone to receive the alert. The second technology concerns geolocated SMS (LB-SMS or Location-Based SMS), but this point will be for later. Note that the first technology works in 4G (and soon in 5G), where the second works in 2G, 3G and 4G. But delivering large volumes of SMS may take longer. Each of these two technologies is complementary, their combination allowing an optimal alert.

Example of an alert with FR-ALERT

The advantage of the system is that it is native. There is no application to download, just as there is no registration to perform. As soon as the authorities send an alert, iPhones in France will receive the message. The same is true on Android.

It is worth noting that these are targeted alerts. Let’s say there is a gas leak in a city, only people in that city (or possibly the surrounding area) will receive the alert. The French in the rest of the country will have nothing because they are not concerned.

You can disable FR-ALERT alerts by going to Settings > Notifications and scrolling to the very bottom of the page. Oddly, the settings have not been translated into French.