BEIJING—Hong Kong is suffering from a mysterious illness called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). On 1 April, a rumor surfaced that the whole city would be quarantined and cut off from the outside world. This led to panic buying in supermarkets.
To quickly quell the rumor, the city’s Information Services Department asked the city’s six mobile operators —Smartone, CSL, People’s, Hutchison, New World Mobility and Sunday—to send short text messages to their combined 6 million mobile-phone users.
The South China Morning Post reported it took several hours to send the messages and added that not all users received them. It was the first time in history that text messages were sent on such a mass scale.
For information on a similar planned SMS use in the United Kingdom, see U.K. plans terror attack warning using SMS.
With a heavy emphasis on development and manufacturing from Asia, the high-tech industry is experiencing overall repercussions from the deadly SARS virus sweeping through Southeast Asia.
A number of companies have announced SARS-related changes to their operations, including Intel, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, which were forced to temporarily close some of their Hong Kong offices and have employees work from home.
Intel also canceled a pair of conferences in Beijing and Taipei, Taiwan, which were scheduled for later this month and instead said it would schedule smaller meetings and personal briefings.
The CDMA Development Group, which sponsors the CDMA World Congress in Hong Kong, said the conference was still scheduled to take place there in early June.
