The alert is a broadcast from the cell site. It’s not targeting specific phones so this isn’t surprising.
I have three phones, all three use the at&t cell tower network. Two have at&t accounts and the third is served by TracFone. Only one on the at&t account is a smartphone. All have text messaging that does work fine.
Only my Samsung Galaxy S5 on the at&t account received the alert. I get full bars so not a signal problem. It must have been some other issue as others on our at&t wireless accounts also did not receive the test alert if they did not have full out smartphones.
I also saw the alert on every Dish Sat TV channel I could tune before it was turned off. I've never seen any EAS type alerts on channels received using Dish's satellites except one local station that I can get from Dish using both, the OTA connector on the Dish receiver or from the signal that comes down via the satellites. That station's EAS messages makes it at all times regardless of how you get its signal. it's a small station also that is the local OTA station affiliated with the ION network. Even though it is a small station, Dish still retransmits its signal. The other larger local network stations (ABC, CBS etc.) EAS messages are only seen when tuning those stations via OTA signals. Even the major network stations that Dish retransmits here seem to be missing EAS messages.
I did not get to try anything sent over Charter cable channels.
I found it interesting that only my true smartphone received the alert on the at&t network. The big difference between my smartphone and the two that did not receive the WEA or EAS test is that the smartphone is using 4G technology while the two other phones are 3G. I'm not certain but I guess there are different frequency bands for 4G and 3G. I don't think the two technologies can share the same frequency band. Anyone know this for certain?
I do suspect this to be the reason the alert was not received on the two non smartphone devices.