U.S. test of national alerts on Oct. 4 at 2:20pm EDT (1820 UTC)

Wed Oct 4 23:07:55 UTC 2023

On Wed, 4 Oct 2023, Matthew Petach wrote:
> Ah, I didn't realize that was locally set on the device--I thought that was
> part of the message header in the message being sent out.
> 
> Thanks for the clarification.  ^_^

Yep.  That's why countries with a Prime Minister (or monarch or both) were 
complaining.  Canada complained politely, but complained.  :-)

The Cell Broadcast channel is very bit-limited.  No room for extra stuff. 
User interface presentation layer wrapper stuff is built into the handset.

Other countries couldn't force the change themselves. Needed the U.S. to 
stop insisting on "Presidential Alert" label and the mobile phone OS 
vendors to update their global software releases.  Mobile device 
manufactures would translate "Presidential Alert" into other languages, 
but wouldn't change it based on a country's political system outside of 
the U.S.

Global standards are great.  Tourist mobile phones work (and get emergency 
alerts) wherever governments send them, without needing funky Apps.  Fun 
at the Olympics with visitors from around the world getting an alert for 
the first time. Yes, I know some countries still insist on local funky 
Apps. But the U.S. insistance on its way is a pain in the a**.

Now need global mobile device manufactures to update their OS releases, 
everyone to buy new handsets or add it to the carrier localization 
configuration.

Apple's forced iOS migrations upset some people, but it does keep its 
ecosystem up to date.