Gregory's Server@Brendanjones It's an eternal struggle. Because If you are the government, one important aspect of this is picking a communication method that most of your citizens use. If you feel in danger on the train, the last thing you would want is a hard time communicating the issue.
Short of them hiring their own developers to develop their own communication app, for both Apple and Android, they'd have to use some alternative communication method that is owned by somebody else.
@zacatero Salient point. I’d probably be fine with governments offering communication through private services as long as they always also offered a public service that doesn’t require you to submit to unnecessary tracking and sharing of personal info.
And that the public service is as accessible and easy to use as the private service, and the response times are not better through the private service.
In short, there’s no loss of quality of service if you use the public service.