Tens of thousands of mobile users in Bangladesh’s flood and cyclone-prone areas will now receive advance warning of an impending natural disaster through an alert on their cell phones, reports Reuters.

“… Bangladesh, with a population of around 162 million, has more than 46 million mobile phone subscribers.Syed Ashraf, communications specialist for the country’s Disaster Management Bureau, told Reuters by telephone that the messages would not be the usual SMS format, but would flash automatically on the screen of mobile phone sets, instead of going to message boxes.

This way, people would not have to even push a button on their handsets, making it very user-friendly, he said.”