One thing that I am truly amazed to discover from this, that is the number of infallible people living in NZ. 

frankv:

 

 

 

1. I thought it was Govt policy to give contracts to NZ companies so that NZers would be employed?

 

2. One error is too many when it comes to the live system. Would it be OK if the first real alert was erroneously only sent to their test environment?

 

4. Because it's our money that's being spent. This seems to me to be poor quality and of limited value; perhaps more lives would be saved by spending our money on something else?

 

What is your evidence that the Government didn't seek interest from NZ companies? 

What evidence other the ONE error that it is "poor quality and of limited value" ?

PhantomNVD: Pretty sure it’s provider and number agnostic... more like a wake ‘multicast’ alert broadcast on a PC network, it just ‘goes out to all’ and it’s up to the receiving Ethernet connected devices to ‘listen’ for it or not... and respond as they are programmed to?

I guess the media is also at fault here. Calling this a "TXT message" is therefore very far from correct.

PaulBags: Oh and inept emergancy broadcasts on designated radio stations.

They are trying to saves lives. To be honest  you need to get over yourself and look at the bigger picture.

PaulBags: They're not saving anything while waffling about the PMs cat or whatever during an emergancy. To be fair they did a little better during the Tsunami, but still not good enough.

It sounds like your just annoyed you got woken up by something you can't disable :)

Starscream122:

 

PaulBags: They're not saving anything while waffling about the PMs cat or whatever during an emergancy. To be fair they did a little better during the Tsunami, but still not good enough.

 

 

 

It sounds like your just annoyed you got woken up by something you can't disable :)

 

I think that is a valid reason to be annoyed, especially when you have multiple phones lying around in the house.

My partner's work iphone got the alert (in Welly CBD), her older personal iphone didn't.  All quiet on my sammie.  

We went back to sleep immediately after each alert.  It's good to know the system will wake us up.  NBD.

All the complaining has me thinking we need a concrete truck emoji.

MikeB4:

 

 

 

What is your evidence that the Government didn't seek interest from NZ companies? 

 

None at all. If they did, it's depressing that NZ doesn't have the software development infrastructure needed. Or that it can't compete. Or whatever.

 

What evidence other the ONE error that it is "poor quality and of limited value" ?

 

"Poor quality" is based on the ONE (that we know of) error which was a fundamental failure, not only by whoever screwed up, but also by the company's quality management system. This isn't rocket science. When I started software development back in the 1980s we knew about and successfully managed separate development and production environments. It's well-understood and standard practice, but this company managed to screw it up. Where's their policies and procedures? Where's their ISO9001 or whatever? Where's their quality management? I think that this is tip-of-the-iceberg, canary-in-the-coalmine stuff.

"Limited value" is based on it only working on a few handsets. No doubt in the future it will expand to include others, but if it goes live as expected at the end of the year, it will only be useful to a small fraction of the population. Presumably the systems already in use in the USA, Japan, and elsewhere *don't* rely on IOS11 and whatever the latest version of Android is. Why wasn't something useful to the vast majority of people implemented instead?

I wasn't so lucky. Or was, can't decide. Being in the populated VF black hole that I am

Assuming my Moto would get it if it was using this system service..

I didn't get any alert. Must be because I don't have any kind of cellphone.

frankv:

 

 

 

"Poor quality" is based on the ONE (that we know of) error which was a fundamental failure, not only by whoever screwed up, but also by the company's quality management system.

 

There is a slight possibility that the failure wasn't just in "the company"'s system.

 

This isn't rocket science. When I started software development back in the 1980s we knew about and successfully managed separate development and production environments. It's well-understood and standard practice, but this company managed to screw it up.

 

When you started software development in the 1980s your entire codebase would take up less room than a modern configuration file. Everybody in this industry understands development and production environments, too. But nobody has a development radio network the size of New Zealand. You want to test that all the geographic targeting features work on a nation-wide RAN? ... Well, I would suggest you wouldn't be too pleased with the waste of the government having to fund three nation-size RANs just to avoid the chance of a small inconvenience in the middle of one night.

 

Where's their ISO9001 or whatever? 

 

Ah, of course. ISO9001 would've saved us!

 

"Limited value" is based on it only working on a few handsets.

 

It works on iOS and Android. It will also work on a Nokia from 1992 as long as you manually configure the right cell broadcast channels, although to be fair the old Nokia will receive the alert but it probably won't wake you up.