Six months cell broadcast: 175 warnings have already been sent across Germany

Six months after the cell broadcast warning system went into operation in German mobile communications, 175 warnings have already been issued. Test alarms are also counted. This was announced by Vodafone to the dpa news agency. “The new system works very reliably in our network,” explained Tanja Richter, the provider’s network manager. So far everything has been running smoothly from a technical point of view, confirms Hendrik Roggendorf from the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK). Another warning day is planned as a test on September 14, at 11:00 a.m. all compatible devices should receive a message. It follows the warning day of December 8, 2022. According to Vodafone, more than 50 million devices are likely to ring nationwide this time.

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Use numbers vary greatly

According to Vodafone, Cell Broadcast is used quite differently in different regions. The most warnings about the system were therefore at 39 in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Rhineland-Palatinate (34), Lower Saxony (20) and Hesse (19) follow, while in the second most populous federal state, Bavaria, there were only 15 such messages. In Baden-Württemberg, the warning system was only triggered five times, here and in the neighboring country it was mainly about warnings for major fires, plus here and in the rest of the republic there were indications of World War II bombs found and severe weather warnings. In Rhineland-Palatinate there were even indications of an accident involving dangerous goods and contaminated drinking water. There has been no warning in Bremen so far.

The responsible situation centers of the federal states as well as the control centers of the administrative districts and urban districts send information via cell broadcast. You define an area for which the notices apply and transmit the information to the mobile network operator. They route the messages into their networks, where they are sent by the respective mobile phone antenna like a radio signal to all devices logged into the radio cell and received by them if the technical requirements for this are met. The settings may have to be adjusted for this. If the devices are switched on and ready to receive, they ring. Cell broadcast complements the existing infrastructure of sirens, radio, TV or apps.

The fact that the system is used in so many different ways only became apparent a few days ago. Despite severe storms with flooding of entire streets, the city of Nuremberg made a conscious decision not to issue warnings via cell broadcast out of concern about too many emergency calls and against the background of a heavy load on the mobile network. Elsewhere, however, cell broadcast was also used during storms, for example one day before the storm in Nuremberg during a heavy thunderstorm in Brandenburg/Havel. In Lower Saxony there were several warnings about storms, and there was also a case in Hesse. The reason for the introduction of the technology was also the flood disaster in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia in the summer of 2021 with more than 180 deaths.

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