New Delhi, May 3 -- At 11.40 am on Saturday, millions of phones across India blared a loud alert simultaneously, interrupting calls and conversations. The disruption was deliberate. It was a nationwide test of a multilingual cell broadcast system developed by the state-owned Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) for emergency warnings during disasters. Why is India rolling out this system? Mint explains

Cell broadcast is a technology that sends a single message to all mobile phones in a specific area simultaneously through nearby mobile towers, unlike SMS, which delivers messages one by one. The system works independently of internet connectivity or mobile data. Such alerts are designed to override phone settings and cannot be dis...