E-ALERT. The Romanian government is preparing a new emergency ordinance by which it wants to ban those mobile phone models that cannot receive warning messages from the system. RO-ALERT was launched in the fall of last year, and used until now to warn the population about some emergency situations, but not all phones can receive messages from the system.
E-ALERT. The Romanian government wants to solve this problem, so it is preparing the adoption of an emergency ordinance that will prohibit the sale of phones that cannot receive messages from the system. All mobile phone models that cannot receive messages from RO-ALERT will be able to be sold for 6 months after the entry into force of the ordinance, after which they must disappear from store stocks.
RO-ALERT will remove some phones from the market because of the Romanian Government
E-ALERT. The draft of the emergency ordinance does not specify the models of mobile phones that are removed from sale, but only the technical parameters that they must respect. This means that regardless of the manufacturer, any phone that cannot receive the alerts from RO-ALERT will have to be removed from the stores because it does not offer security for customers.
Mobile phones in stock or contracted before the date of entry into force of this emergency ordinance, which have not activated the possibility of receiving RO-ALERT messages, may be sold until the liquidation of these stocks, but no later than 180 days from the date of entry in force of this emergency ordinance.
E-ALERT. The measure is a very good one, because it will force manufacturers who do not provide support for the system to do so, otherwise they risk having the phones removed from sale. Very few mobile phone models cannot receive messages from RO-ALERT at the moment, and in their case, either updates will be offered, or the purchase will be impossible in Romania.
Safety first, and the obligation of the shops
E-ALERT. Apart from the obligation of the stores to remove non-compliant phones from sale, they will also have to display instructions for activating the system on the compliant ones. The stores will also have to display the website address of the emergency alert platform, so that people can configure their mobile phones themselves.
E-ALERT. To be completely honest, I think that the idea behind this emergency ordinance is very good, but unfortunately it remains to be seen to what extent it will really be applied in Romania.
