Emergency phone alert debacle deepens as users report being woken up in the middle of the night

The mobile phone alert fiasco deepened yesterday, with users being woken at 2am by the alarm which was supposed to arrive the day before.

The Government’s emergency alert system was supposed to send a test alarm to millions of smartphones across the UK at 3pm on Sunday.

But thousands received their alerts early, late, or not at all, with officials blaming the mobile phone network Three for the mix-up.

Other users were woken or disturbed by their phones beeping between midnight and 8am yesterday – with sources suggesting it was caused by phone masts sending the signal hours after the end of the test.

The early-hours alerts echoed a situation in Florida last week, when the state test of the alarm was sent to phones at 3am.

One social media user told how his phone network Three were sending out the alert in different phases

Government officials had ruled out the prospect of such a blunder in the UK.

One smartphone user on a night bus posted a video of the alarm sounding, adding: ‘Emergency Test Alert disturbed my sleep while travelling from Cardiff to London after 3am.’

Danny Wisniewksi, from Slough, said he and his wife were woken up 2.22am when the alarm went off on his phone.

He told The Sun: ‘It scared the life out of myself and my wife as we were fast asleep and wondered what was going on. It was the same alert I had on Sunday.’

And the alerts continued to sound well into yesterday morning.

Mark Peters, from Derby, told the paper her got an alert at 8am, saying: ‘It doesn’t bode well if this is supposed to be keeping us safe and alert.’ 

A Twitter user wrote: ‘This morn [Monday] @ 9am got the alert with siren, we [were] driving to Wales and at 11 am on Severn Bridge we got the siren again. Its a farce.’

Others also reported getting more than one alert, several hours apart.

The test-run included an error in its Welsh language version, using the word Vogel, which has no meaning in Welsh but is the name of a ski resort in Slovenia.

Tory MP David Jones said: ‘Bizarrely, a second emergency test has just sounded on all the phones in the train carriage I’m travelling in. 

Another Three user on Twitter explained how they received no emergency alerts 

‘The Welsh text still spells ”ddiogel” as ”Vogel”, which I understand is a Slovenian ski resort and is getting quite a lot of free advertising.’

Another man wrote: ‘I got an emergency alert test again just over an hour ago. Am I the only one to get 2?’

An investigation is underway into the errors, including why some Three customers did not get the alert at all on Sunday.

The Government said it will be working with all the mobile network operators to collect data and review what happened.

A Three spokesman said: ‘We are aware that a number of customers have not received the test alert. We are working closely with the government to understand why and ensure it doesn’t happen when the system is in use.’

A government spokesman said: ‘We have effectively completed the test of the UK-wide Emergency Alerts system, the biggest public communications exercise of its kind ever done. We are working with mobile network operators to review the outcome and any lessons learned.’