Starting from April 15, location-based emergency SMS alerts will be sent to individuals in Estonia in their preferred language. The Ministry of the Interior urges users to check their language preference with their mobile operator and update it if necessary.
“This update helps to overcome previous limitations: in the past, location-based emergency SMS alerts were often sent in three languages simultaneously, which made the messages longer and slowed down their delivery,” explained Kadi Luht-Kallas, an adviser at the Ministry of the Interior and project manager for the language preference initiative.
She said non-Latin characters such as Õ, Ž, Š, or Cyrillic letters increase the technical size of messages and may affect their delivery.
“From now on, people will receive emergency alerts only in their preferred language, quickly, clearly, and concisely,” she said.
Receiving messages in a preferred language reduces the workload of the national information helpline 1247 and the emergency number 112, as in the past many people have called to have the message translated.
This can impact emergency response services and slow down the delivery of assistance.
“It’s important to note that changes to language preferences take up to 24 hours to take effect in the emergency notification system, and only mobile operators can see the selected preference,” explained Antti Turmann, service manager of the EE-ALARM core platform at RIKS.
He added that the test phase of the update has been successfully completed, and they are ready to implement the solution.
Language preference is determined based on operator databases and is usually already set correctly according to the contract.
Issues may arise with company-owned numbers, especially if they are not linked to an individual user.
Although language preferences can be changed at any time, the Ministry of the Interior and its partners strongly recommend not leaving this decision until the last minute but making the choice today.
Mobile operators have provided clear instructions for this process:
Location-based emergency SMS alerts are part of Estonia’s comprehensive emergency notification system, EE-ALARM, which currently consists of a siren network, location-based SMS alerts, the “Eesti.ee” and “Ole valmis!” mobile applications, ticker messages on ETV and ETV+ channels, and RDS text on the Vikerraadio channel.
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Editor: Helen Wright
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