The French-owned mobile phone service provider, MEO, has been testing a new fire alert SMS messaging service in response to the communications breakdown during last summer’s devastating forest fires.The operator went one step beyond developing its new service by sending out an undisclosed number of SMS massages that read ‘fogooooooooo fujam’ (fire, flee)
This was a test of the system that is due to be launched on June 1st but nobody at MEO thought to explain this to the luckless recipients until six hours had elapsed.
The new alert system is not confined to MEO, thankfully, as other national operators including NOS, Vodafone and NOWO, have agreed to send warning messages in the event of forest fires and other natural disasters.
MEO’s testing should have remained an internal routine until launch but on Wednesday, customers of MEO, which now is owned by Patrick Drahi’s Altice, reported having received the SMS message from a sender identified as, TestPT1.
Six hours after the first message, the operations team realised its error and sent a message apologising to MEO customers.
"Today, a test SMS was sent by mistake. Please ignore it. We apologise for the inconvenience," read the follow-up message.
The number of recipients affected by this mistake “was small,” according to MEO, which did not release figures on customer complaints or panicked phone calls to helpline staff.
