No apologies for the awful sound, with phones set to buzz on Sunday night in emergency test

Sunday, 14 June 2026

The only way to avoid the alert was to switch the phone off, or put it in flight mode. (file photo)

Phones are set to buzz on Sunday night for a test of the National Emergency Management Agency’s warning system.

Sometime between 6pm and 7pm, NEMA will transmit a mobile alert in its ninth nationwide test of the system.

It would make an unpleasant sound, “but it’s designed as such, to get your attention”, NEMA said in a statement.

“It’s based on a global standard so you’ll hear the same noise if you receive alerts in other countries that use cell broadcast alerts.”

There would be no apology for the buzz.

An example of a mobile alert sent by the National Emergency Management Agency, this one as a tsunami warning, in July, 2025.

“Whalesong or waterfall sounds would be lovely, but probably won’t get you out of bed during a tsunami!” NEMA said.

The alert system was tested “every year in every part of the country with mobile coverage”, to check it was working so that it could be used by the agency to alert people to natural disasters and weather events.

“This is a valuable life safety tool to keep our communities safe,” NEMA director civil defence emergency management John Price said.

The alert could not be silenced ahead of time, “because the alerts override the silent function on most phones”, the NEMA statement said.

“If an alert sounds, you can mute it by pressing the volume control button so you can read the message in peace, rather than swiping the message away.”

The only way to opt out of the alert test was to turn the phone off or put it into flight mode during the period of the test, from 6pm to 7pm Sunday.

The alert was not sent to individual phone numbers, instead a signal was sent from a cell tower to every phone connected to it, triggering the buzzy alert.

This could explain why someone might receive the alert multiple times, because if they were moving they might have received the message from a new cell tower.

Sometimes in a household only some people might receive an alert. That was because “Geotargeted areas don’t have a clean border, as cell towers for different providers are in different locations, so some ‘bleed’ will occur for anyone on the ‘safe’ side of the boundary,” NEMA said in the statement.