Cell phones vibrated, chimed and rang across the University around 9 a.m. Tuesday as Information Technology Services sent a trial emergency text message. The text — “This is a test of the LSU Emergency Text Messaging System. No emergency exists. This is a test.” — was sent to 30,901 members of the University with about 95 percent delivery success rate, according to John Borne, technology advisor to the vice chancellor for information technology.Borne said he expects the number to drop to close to 92.8 percent, which was the success rate in spring 2009. Final numbers will be available this morning.The message was sent through the University’s emergency text message service provider, FirstCall. “It looks like we’re on almost the exact same curve as we were in the spring,” Borne said. “The goal is to get it to 100 percent.”Subscribers who changed phone numbers, service providers or plans since subscribing to the service kept the text messages from having a 100 percent success rate, Borne said. Other factors include if cell phones are turned on when the message is sent and if subscribers paid cell phone bills.FirstCall successfully distributed the more than 30,000 text messages within 12 minutes of ITS sending the message, Borne said. After FirstCall sends the messages, reception time depends on cellular carriers.ITS typically picks the date of emergency text message tests between 30 and 60 days before the actual test date, Borne said. ”We only do one [test] per semester,” Borne said. “We don’t want to get people comfortable with the idea of getting messages from the [Emergency Operations Center].”—————Contact Lindsey Meaux at [email protected]
LSU’s emergency text messages tested
September 29, 2009