SMS SOS Emergency Broadcast

Emergency Text Message Broadcasts triggered by simple keywords.

In an emergency situation, notifying a large group of people about imminent danger is often a primary concern. The Emergency SMS Broadcast system from TraiTel can be triggered in moments to send a text message (SMS) to everyone potentially affected by a situation.

Concept

The TraiTel SOS system is a way of broadcasting an emergency SMS message to predetermined numbers from one initiating mobile.

The system has three major components:

• The initiating mobiles

  These are mobile numbers preregistered into the system to be able trigger a broadcast

• The message templates

  The message to be sent in a given event

• The broadcast lists

  The mobile numbers to receive a given broadcast

 

Tags

Message templates are given tags, which are used in the initiating messages to trigger that broadcast. For instance a message about evacuating the grounds would be given the tags: "evac", "evacuate", or simply "e". A message about a fire would be given the tag "fire".

Broadcast lists are also given tags, based on who is in that list. For instance you could have a list of all students and staff, and give that the tag "all". A list of all staff could have the tag "staff" and a particular department list could have a tag based on that department, such as "maths".

Triggering a broadcast

To send a broadcast a person with their mobile registered in the SOS system (as an initiating mobile number) sends an SMS to the emergency number given to them when they registered.

The message contains the relevant tags about the message template and the broadcast lists. So to send a message about a fire to all staff and students (from the examples above) they would send the message "fire all".

The broadcast itself

The TraiTel SOS system receives that trigger message, checks that the mobile sending it is a registered initiating mobile number, and then matches the tags in the message to the message templates and broadcast lists, to determine what to send and to what list of numbers. In the current example, the message template for a fire, would be then sent to every number in the broadcast list for all staff and students.

Broadcasting a message

To trigger a broadcast of the evacuation message to the maths students, I send the words "evac maths" to the number 17055550123 (the send to number for my mobile)

System capability

There is no limit to the amount of broadcast lists able to uploaded for an account, and likewise no limit for the amount of mobiles numbers that can be contained in those lists.

There can be any number of designated initiating numbers able to trigger a broadcast, and multiple tags for each template.

Pricing

The SOS service costs $11.95 (+ taxes) per month. With the SMS messages costing the usual low 9 cents each.