The many tragic events that have befallen various universities and schools in the past few years have raised the need for school administrators to notify students and staff of critical incidents in a timely manner. Since the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, many universities and colleges have increasingly turned to SMS as the basis for their emergency communications strategy. However, there are severe limitations to using SMS text messaging as an emergency system.

Drawbacks to relying on one medium

Focusing on just one or two notification methods, such as SMS messaging and phone calls, is not a reliable mass notification strategy. Current cellular networks do not have the capacity to handle and deliver the volume of SMS messages that need to be sent in order to reach an entire campus population in less than 10 minutes, which is the duration in which a message needs to be received to be most effective in an armed intruder scenario.