In the devastating earthquake in Japan last Friday, thousands of lives were potentially saved by a text message early warning system. And will such a service be available in Taiwan too? Premier Wu Den-yih said on Tuesday that there are still minor technological hurdles to overcome, but the NCC will try to work out a solution with local telecom carriers as soon as possible.

Premier Wu Den-yih said the government will learn from Japan's disaster prevention and response such as sending SMS alerts to the public.

However, current conditions in Taiwan are different as only one carrier has the capacity to carry this out.

In the case of an actual disaster, a cell phone broadcast would be more applicable as the NCC has been invited to discuss this issue.

During the exercise, Wu said that Taiwan's record with tsunamis was quite small though in March counties and cities would be preparing for typhoons and flooding with coastal cities and counties being included in tsunami drills.

New Taipei City was included in this list and on the 24th of this month will have an exercise becoming the first to conduct such a drill.

Wu also stressed that Japan's earthquake preparations still resulted in heavy losses as the government definitely has lots of work to do.

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