In Emergencies,China Mobile Says Can Warn 25 Million People in 10 Seconds
Beijing’s deadly floods this summer quickly became an avenue for criticism of the government when it claimed it would have been “impossible” to text a warning to the city’s more than 20 million residents in a timely fashion. China Mobile’s Guangdong subsidiary quickly proved this wrong by sending out more than 30 million warning texts about floods in that region shortly after the Beijing disaster, and now the company has come out and said that it has the capability to handle warnings in Beijing, too. In fact, Beijing Mobile (China Mobile’s Beijing subsidiary) Party secretary Tian Limin says that with the government’s permission the company is capable of sending out 25 million warning texts — enough to cover every Beijing resident — in under ten seconds. – Tech in Asia