Coronavirus: Millions yet to receive UK government's Covid-19 text

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Millions of mobile users in the UK have yet to receive the government's text message alert about coronavirus.

The SMS - telling people to stay at home - began being sent early on Tuesday morning.

But Vodafone has confirmed it only expects to complete the process later this Wednesday.

One expert said that it highlights the shortcoming of not having a system that can flash a message to people's phones simultaneously.

Vodafone is the only one of the UK's big four networks that has not finished the task.

Three told the BBC it had delivered the text to a total of 10.7 million phone numbers by early afternoon on Tuesday.

EE said it had also completed the process yesterday, having transmitted about 1,000 messages a second.

O2 also confirmed that all its subscribers had been sent the post.

Vodafone said it was still sending out texts in batches of millions an hour, but needed until some time Wednesday afternoon to finish the process.

"We have sent out the majority of messages and aim to complete the process soon," said a spokesman.

2020-03-25 19:34:54