The Government is beginning to deploy FR-Alert, a new mobile emergency alert system to inform the population in a danger zone. There is nothing to install to benefit from it.
In the test phase since April, the new alert system called EN-Alert will be fully deployed by the end of June throughout France and the overseas departments. Set up by the Government, this emergency information system will allow the authorities (police forces, emergency services, etc.) to send real-time notifications to the mobile phones of people in an area affected by to danger. The populations are then quickly informed that an incident has taken place or that there is a danger nearby, so that they can react accordingly. It will be used in cases of absolute emergency, such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, serious road accidents or chemical, nuclear or industrial incidents.
Many countries – Japan, the United States and even some European countries – have had such an alert system for a long time. But France has long been reluctant to implement it because of the many costs it generates. However, this device became mandatory due to the adoption of a European directive of 2018 which set a deadline for implementation on June 21, 2022. This is why the Ministry of the Interior waited so long to launch FR-Alert after testing it for several months.
The principle of FR-Alert is very simple. In the event of an emergency (natural or industrial disaster, attack, serious road accident, chemical or nuclear accident, etc.), the Government sends an information message to the State portal. This alert is immediately transferred to the mobile telephone operators, who in turn broadcast it to the antennas of the network covering the danger zone, by cellular broadcasting. From then on, a priority alert is displayed on the entire phone screen of people located in the area concerned, accompanied by a fairly strident sound signal, including when the mobile is in silent mode. Users with regular phones will receive an SMS. Of course, only the people concerned by the imminent danger are alerted. These messages make it possible to specify the nature and location of the danger, as well as to communicate the action to be taken. A measure that allows rescuers to save precious time in a crisis situation where every second counts.
The implementation of FR-Alert follows the failure of the application SAIP (population alert and information system). Indeed, given that it was necessary to download an application, few people were aware, and therefore concerned by the alerts. And even for those using SAIP, the system was not very functional, as evidenced by the attacks of July 14, 2016 in Nice. The alerts had indeed only been broadcast a few hours after the killing…
To overcome these problems and ensure that the vast majority of the population is alerted, this time there is no application to install on your smartphone. If you have an iPhone, you may have already received a message for a carrier settings update, which will allow your mobile to display these alerts. It is necessary to install this update to benefit from FR-Alert. For Android smartphones, on the other hand, there is no manipulation to do, because they are already configured in this way by default.