Dal to update text-message alert service

Previous service had slow message delivery. Koodoo and Telus users may see charge.

Students that use Dal Alert like to receive alerts when the University is closed so they can sleep in.

Dalhousie University will launch an update to its emergency text message system on Monday.

The text messaging service is intended to alert students and staff of campus hazards, decisions that affect large groups and every weather-related delay or cancellation.

Previously, Dal Alert had 11,240 subscribers, a database that took a long time to build up, according to Dwight Fischer, assistant vice president of Information Technology Services at Dalhousie. Dal Alert is free... if you're not a Koodoo or Telus subscriber. Dalhousie absorbed the cost for most carriers, but not for Telus and Koodoo: they don't support this option.

The new service will start working on Nov. 1. The old system will remain in service for two weeks. Students will have to subscribe once again to get the service because the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association regulates that all customers must subscribe themselves. "It will take a while again," Fischer said, on building the new database.

But many students say they are willing to subscribe again and they're even willing to pay for the service.

"I subscribed last Saturday," said Khalil Albloushi. "I would be willing to pay because it's good. It tells me when to stay at home."

Melissa Wallace, a Dalhousie student, said: "I think I already got something like that. I would subscribe again because it's good for snow days."

To subscribe to this new service, students must login at MyDal and look for the Dal Alert tab.

Last year, one or two messages were sent to alert students, according to Kurt Sampson, a developer at Dahousie's Information Technology Services.

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