Emergency Alert launched in 2009. It sends location-based SMS messages and automated landline calls to warn people about emergencies. For 17 years, it was Australia's only national warning system. But its limitations have become increasingly clear during real emergencies.

During the Brisbane floods, the system could only send approximately 50,000 messages per hour. With hundreds of thousands of people in the flood zone, alerts took over 10 hours to deliver. Some never arrived at all.

The 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements found the technology was "outdated" and recommended its upgrade as a priority.

How Emergency Alert fails

• Capacity limit: ~50,000 SMS per hour. During mass emergencies, the queue backs up for hours.
• Blocked as spam: Alerts come from +61444444444. Many people block this number.
• Network congestion: SMS uses the same channels as voice and data. During emergencies, networks are overloaded.
• Wrong location: SMS relies on carrier "last known location" data, which can be hours or days stale.
• Inbox full: If your SMS inbox is full, the alert is silently dropped. No retry.
• Landline failures: Cordless phones don't work during power outages. Automated calls can't connect if the line is in use.
• Cross-border confusion: Residents near state borders receive alerts from adjacent states they aren't in.

AusAlert uses cell broadcast instead of SMS. Cell broadcast sends a single message from a mobile tower to every device in range simultaneously, using a dedicated signalling channel that is separate from voice and data.

This is the same technology used by the US (Wireless Emergency Alerts since 2012), Japan (J-Alert since 2004), the EU (EU-Alert mandate since 2018), and New Zealand (Emergency Mobile Alert since 2017).

• No capacity limit: All devices receive the alert simultaneously. No queue.
• Cannot be blocked: Critical alerts bypass all phone settings including silent mode and Do Not Disturb.
• Works during congestion: Separate signalling channel from voice/data traffic.
• Precision GPS targeting: Down to 160 metres. Each device checks its own GPS. No stale carrier data.
• No phone number needed: Works without a SIM card or active plan.
• Privacy preserving: No subscriber data collected. Device checks location locally.

Both systems will run in parallel during the transition period:

• June 2026: AusAlert community trials across 9 locations
• 27 July 2026: National test -- all compatible devices
• October 2026: AusAlert goes live (Emergency Alert continues as fallback)
• July 2027: Legacy Emergency Alert decommissioned

During the transition, emergency services may send alerts through both systems simultaneously to ensure maximum reach.

Neither Emergency Alert nor AusAlert provides a developer API. This is a gap that sets Australia behind international practice. In the US, FEMA provides IPAWS-OPEN (free developer access), an archived alerts dataset, and real-time CAP feeds for registered consumers.

EmergencyAPI bridges this gap for Australian developers. It aggregates 33 government emergency feeds from all 8 states into one REST API with GeoJSON, CSV, and CAP-AU output formats. Free tier at 500 calls per day.

For more on how emergency alert data is structured, see our CAP-AU Developer Guide.