AT&T has confirmed that it accidentally relayed an incorrect emergency alert message from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to its U-verse customers in parts of Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Michigan and Mississippi.
The alert messages began popping up on screens around 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 24th. Red banners appeared the television screens of viewers in the affected areas alerting them to stand by for an important message.
Soon after the incident FEMA spokesperson Rafael Lemaitre stated that there had been an inappropriate playing of the national emergency alert notification tones on a syndicated radio broadcast. He went on to state that there is not a national emergency but that the broadcast triggered alert notification in states where it had been played. Lemaitre said his agency was working with the FCC to quantify the scale of the incident.