Foreign Office trials emergency texts abroad service

The Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) is trialling a service to deliver emergency text messages to Britons facing dangerous situations abroad.

The FCO has teamed up with Vodafone UK and all the UK mobile providers with services running on Vodafone's network – including Asda Mobile, Lebara Mobile, Talkmobile, TalkTalk, BT Mobile, Gamma Telecom and Cognatel.

The operators' customers will receive text messages if they are in a country where there has been a major crisis, such as a natural disaster or civil unrest.

The service will be free to customers of the mobile providers taking part in the trial.

The Foreign Office will pilot this service for a 12-month period.

Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne said: "The recent consular crises in Libya and Japan have demonstrated the need to deliver live travel safety messages to as many people as quickly as possible. This new service is part of our vision to deliver better consular services more cost-effectively and we hope in the future we will be able to roll out this service with other mobile network operators and mobile providers."

The FCO already provides services and information through Facebook and Twitter and said this would also continue.