CRTC confirms first emergency public alert test in Quebec and Ontario failed

A CRTC spokesperson has confirmed that its first emergency public alert test, which was slated for the province of Quebec, has failed.

The issue, which the CRTC says did not originate with service providers, affected the entire province this morning.

According to the CRTC, the failure stemmed from a glitch between emergency management in Quebec and Pelmorex Corp., which operates the public alert system.

Test signals were supposed to be sent to millions of mobile users in Quebec at 9:55am ET. The CRTC says previously announced testing for Ontario is still set to take place later today at 1:55pm ET.

Testing for the rest of Canada, meanwhile, is scheduled to take place on May 9th.

As of April 6th, all Canadian carriers are required to have their networks capable of supporting the CRTC-mandated wireless public alerting (WPA) system. With WPA, mobile users across Canada will be able to receive emergency alerts on crises like fires, tornadoes and Amber Alerts.

However, while testing of the system is underway in Canada, an actual full rollout date has not yet been determined. The CRTC says it aims to have 100 percent implementation of the alert system by April 2019.

Update 07/05/2018: Ontario’s alert tests seem to have experienced similar hiccups as well. While some Twitter users are reporting they have received the alert, others are noting that they haven’t yet.

So… did this happen for anyone? https://t.co/yiRdDdQ9tU

— emily jackson (@theemilyjackson) May 7, 2018

Not me, but am seeing lots of reports of "yes" and lots of "no", on Twitter anyway…

— Greg O'Brien (@gregobr) May 7, 2018

It’s currently unclear if the tests in Ontario are suffering from a similar glitch to the one reported in Quebec, or if this is just part of a delayed rollout.

It’s also worth noting that some users who say they have received the message are acknowledging the link it refers to leads to a broken official province of Ontario website.

And there goes the Ontario alerts. Audio message points to https://t.co/HqlIHZi0xR, which gives a 504 error message. (It also sounds like “ontario-dot-kah-slash-alertrety”, which might drive people incorrectly to https://t.co/4Qd9Y2Gr7N)

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) May 7, 2018

If you live in Ontario, have you received the alert yet, and if so, did it contain a broken link? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks. The iPhone 6 along with the other devices below are not available for the testing phase but will be available when Alert Ready is launched.

Apple: iPhone 5s/SE/6/6+/6s/6s+/7/7+/8/8+/X
LG: G6

-EricE

— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) May 7, 2018

Credit to reader Jessica D’Costa for providing a screenshot of the alert (received on an iPhone X).  

Via: CTV News