Text Messaging for Schools and Companies to Ease Winter Misery

As the extreme winter weather continues to hit most of the country, companies and schools are faced with the huge task of contacting customers, staff and parents. Companies need to quickly advise their customers and staff of important information such as office closures and alternative working arrangements. Schools must advise parents as soon as possible that they should not bring their children to school or in the event of worsening weather conditions and building problems schools need to communicate with parents to collect their children early.

Making contact with customers, staff and parents when an organisation needs to do so quickly can be a resource intensive process and one which can take a considerable length of time if someone needs to phone around and speak to all contacts. Most people nowadays have their mobile phones with them and so are immediately contactable by a phone call, but more importantly can be contacted by SMS text message. SMS text messaging is an instant and extremely powerful tool for contacting a large number of people simultaneously.

SMS text messaging is used by a number of organisations throughout the UK and worldwide for communicating in emergencies or distributing information in less urgent situations. Schools and nurseries are a prime example of where the use of SMS text messaging can allow quick communication with a high number of parents and staff in a cost effective way. No company or school should be without such a powerful communications tool at any point in the year, not least during the winter months. With the extreme weather conditions we are experiencing again at this time of year SMS reduces the burden. SMS can improve communications and can assist when implementing contingency plans but at the same time SMS can save companies and schools a significant amount of money by being more efficient and effective in their communications.

HSL provides a number of services and solutions that can be used to enable communication with large groups of people efficiently and effectively. HSL's WebSMS solution provides a web browser interface that can be used from any computer to easily send messages to large groups of people simultaneously. Delivery to each recipient of the SMS is confirmed, meaning you can track the delivery of each message sent. The HSL AlertBroadcast solution allows a "controller" user to remotely send a message from their own mobile handset to a large number of mobile phones simply by sending a single SMS message, removing the need to be at a computer at all.

Messaging Volumes Continue to Grow

The Telecommunications Market Data Update Q1 2010 from the UK's communications regulator, Ofcom, shows that mobile users are continuing to make greater use of mobile messaging.  The total SMS and MMS messaging volumes for the four main UK operators reached nearly 27 billion in Q1 2010, compared with 21.4 billion in Q1 2009.

SMS and Community Policing

The challenge of policing in a modern society such as the UK should be easier than in earlier years through the advantage that advances in technology bring to preventing crime and disorder.  Technology alone has not been able to keep police forces ahead of crime, even with good programmes such as Community Safety Partnerships (CSP) that build a stronger relationship between the police and the community.

The level of policing required to tackle crime and disorder can vary from country to country.  In Germany, two thirds of people surveyed said that they would intervene to stop antisocial behaviour (ASB).  This contrasts with only one third of people in the UK who said in a similar survey that they would intervene to stop ASB.

Dealing with antisocial behaviour in the UK and the public's reluctance to try to stop it is in part due to a strong aversion to being in harms way, but also to a reluctance to get involved bordering on apathy.  This reluctance is in part due to the perception of effort required to report a problem to the police. People may think that they'll be on the phone for a long time and possibly could be getting on with something else.  They think that their details will be taken and there will be further - undesired - involvement on their part. This is all just slightly too much when all they what to do is let the police know that there's something that they need to take a look into.

Unless there is a police officer close at hand then you have to make a telephone call to report something that you've noticed.  If it's a very serious matter then people would not normally hesitate too much to make the call.  However, if it's a group of people vandalising the childrens' play park then there will (unfortunately) be greater reluctance to report the matter.  The likelihood of the matter being reported can be increased by making it easier to report it to the police.

By using an SMS texting service where the police can be contacted for non-emergency (i.e. not life threatening) matters, the police can become more accessible to the community.  The technology can also be coupled with location information to show where the individual was at the time they reported the matter, and this taken with the content of the message, can add context and clarity to the report. For example, if the person reporting the matter was not clear enough about the location of the incident then the accompanying location information that such a SMS texting service could provide would add accuracy.

SMS is a widely used technology that is discrete, quick and easy to use.  As a means for increasing communication through a less formal conduit with the police it can be an effective technology if properly embraced.  A common non-emergency phone number across the UK that can be used for voice and text and help increase the adoption of the SMS texting service for reporting incidents to police.  It should be mandatory that mobile network operators provide their subscribers with access to the service and that use of this service for reporting incidents to the police not be included on bills and be free of charge to the subscriber.

Manage expectations and perception of business through improved communication

The recent eruption of the volcano on Iceland has had a large impact on the aviation industry, but also transport by road, rail and sea as people try to find alternatives to flying while airlines were grounded. There have been reports of poor communication with passengers, for which both airlines and airports have been guilty. The confusion and anxiety caused by the grounding of flights could have been mitigated to some degree through better communication with passengers.

I read an interesting blog, admittedly from one of our partners, on the use of notification software to help improve communication during such incidents and improve customer service and the perception of the airlines. Their blog can be found at http://matthesderdack.blogspot.com/2010/04/volcano-ash-caused-information-chaos.html.

One way of communicating quickly and efficiently with a large number of mobile users can be found at http://www.hslsms.com/solutions/alertbroadcast/. This service is often used in parallel with HSL's WebSMS solution (http://www.hslsms.com/solutions/websms/)

Secure Mobile Messaging #1

SMS is not a completely secure technology and therefore using SMS for communicating sensitive messages could have severe consequences if the message was intercepted,. The technology is adequately secure for a number of purposes such as chat between friends or colleagues, news alerts and entertainment or informational content. For these purposes the use of SMS is appropriate.


In reality the uses to which SMS are put are many and it is often too convenient a technology that leads to its use being inappropriate for some purposes.


The vertical sectors that can benefit the most from secure mobile messaging and to whom disclosure of a message can potentially be catastrophic are financial, law enforcement, government and aviation. Even although most benefit is typically achieved by theses sectors, secure mobile messaging also has a strong place across most most organisations.


Why is SMS not secure? There are a number of stages at which an SMS message can be intercepted. GSM addresses some of these stages but none sufficiently to deliver complete security. For a message being sent between two mobile users belonging to two different mobile networks the stages are: (1) air interface, (2) transmission links and switches, (3) SMSC platform, (4) transmission links and switches (origin network), (5) transmission links and switches (destination network) and (6) air interface. The air interfaces in stages (1) and (6) are typically secured using A5/1 or A5/3 encryption, the latter being less common but increasing in usage, however it is possible to intercept SMS to or from a specific handset if you are using the same cell as the target handset. Once the message is away from the air interface the message is being passed unencrypted through infrastructure forming the rest of an operator's network and through infrastructure belonging to other parties. It is when a message is traversing this infrastructure that it is at its most vulnerable, and where a sensitive message has the potential to be disclosed.


All it takes is an employee of a mobile operator with access to the relevant equipment or links to "open up" your message and read it. There have been cases in the past where mobile network engineers have snooped on SMS messages without authorisation. Such casual snooping can be easily hidden as being related to a legitimate task so as to not arouse suspicion. SMS messages have even been illegally snooped on by government officials.

Using SMS in Schools

Making contact with parents when a school needs to can be a time consuming and therefore expensive task when someone has to pick up the telephone and speak with each parent. When the boiler breaks down, getting the local radio station to broadcast the news that the school is closed can allow a large percentage of parents to be reached but not everyone will get the news. When Sally didn’t turn up for school, in addition to John, Aidan, Karen, Paul, Kirsty, and fifteen other children, someone at the school needs to speak with a parent to find out why the child is absent.

As every parent typically carries their mobile with them, even when at work, the parent is instantly contactable. Add to this the instant means of reaching a large number of parents simultaneously through SMS, you have a powerful and scalable means of communicating instantly with parents when you need to.

SMS is integrated into a number of school attendance management systems and allows SMS to be sent by the school to the mobile telephone of a parent of an absent child. This capability to send SMS typically also allows broadcast messages to be quickly sent to parents even when the broadcast has to go to many, many parents.

During the winter months in the UK many schools were closed due to snowfall. SMS played an important part in allowing schools to communicate with the parents of pupils in such a way that the high number of parents that had to be contacted did not prevent them being reached before pupils would be arriving at the school. This direct, immediate and almost total communication is something that TV, radio or word of mouth cannot fully address.

HSL provides a number of services and solutions that can be used to enable communications with large groups of people. HSL WebSMS provides a web interface that can be used to easily send a message to distribution lists via a web browser. HSL AlertBroadcast allows a controller to send a message from their own mobile to distribution lists, thus removing the need to be at a computer to send a broadcast message.