Clickatell to provide European Commission's SMS alert service

SMS Text News sponsor, Clickatell, has scored a wicked new client in the form of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. There are more details below, but essentially, Clickatell are charged with delivering text alerts to EC VIPs and Spokespersons wherever they are in the world.

This kind of thing is critical, especially in today’s 24 hour news society. It doesn’t look that good if there’s been a major explosion somewhere only for an EC VIP or Spokesperson to go in front of cameras and know nothing about it. You end up getting that New Orleans-style ‘But haven’t you seen CNN? Seriously, there’s LOTS of people starving Mr Homeland Security’ sort of thing happening.

I can think of quite a few organisations that should have this implemented (if they don’t already).

It’s not just news updates but also, I imagine, policy updates or time-specific information about the European Commission that can be transmitted. Smart.

In more detail from the news release:

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has selected Clickatell, the world’s leading mobile messaging operator, to run its EMM (European Media Monitoring) SMS alert service.

The real-time service informs Commission Spokespersons and nominated EC VIPs, of important breaking news detected by the EMM.

The EMM monitors some 15 news agencies, more than 900 online media and all daily press reviews from the 27 capitals of the EU and beyond. In selecting Clickatell it was imperative that its SMS alert service was robust, reliable and with international reach, given the recipients are often on EC missions around the world. The service also has to be in real-time, to ensure the message will be received by the recipient immediately following the request to deliver by the EMM.

In the event of a global emergency, the relevant EU commissioner would be one of the first to be alerted to the news. The news would be identified by EMM from the point of origin, translated into Unicode and subsequently delivered by SMS to the relevant commissioner in their respective language. The advanced technical platform for the SMS service, developed by Clickatell, ensures the commissioner is ready to take action and address the issue almost immediately.