Better. But not there yet.
UF said it will conduct another test of its emergency messaging system soon - perhaps today - after problems plagued its test Wednesday.
The 65,000 students and employees that are signed up for the service were supposed to receive text messages a few minutes after they were sent out around noon, but most students surveyed for the article reported getting them between 20 and 30 minutes later.
UF spokesman Steve Orlando said a glitch in the system caused a 15-minute delay in getting the messages out.
Orlando said the company in charge of the service, ConnectED, has reportedly fixed the problem and wants to conduct another test.
In addition to texts, UF sent out emergency e-mails, but another glitch caused two e-mails to be sent out instead of one, slowing both messages down a bit, Orlando said.
Students surveyed for the article generally reported getting the e-mails much earlier than the texts.
Even though the company has overseen two unsatisfactory tests so far, Orlando said UF is still willing to give the company a chance.
"There's certainly got to be some point at which we say, 'OK, this is not working out,'" he said. "I don't think we're there yet."
In the last test of the system in August, it took more than an hour for some people to get texts.
That was the first test with ConnectED, which has a $33,000-a-year contract with UF.
In tests with previous providers, messages were sent out in less than six minutes, according to Kenneth Allen, UF's emergency management coordinator.
That doesn't include the time it took the messages to reach individual phones, however.
That process can add a little more time, Allen said, and varies among cell phone carriers.
Jonathan Tillett, a UF computer engineering junior who received his text at 12:23 p.m., said he was disappointed with Wednesday's test run.
