"Hello?" "Run and duck for cover!"

Earthquakes are a common occurrence in Japan, and breaking news reports that there seems to be a new approach to warning citizens of the island nation of these tremors using the nation's extensive network of cell phones.

Here's a snippet from a news article concerning the new service:

Japan's two biggest [wireless] operators, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, said they are jointly developing a system to notify customers of an imminent earthquake, while number three Softbank said it is separately working on a similar service.

The cellphone companies hope to have a system launched in 2008.

The system will pass on information from the Japanese meteorological agency which has developed a way of detecting earthquakes several seconds before the main tremor strikes.

Read more here.

The image at the top is one from the infamous Kobe earthquake of 1995.