Bush Signs Emergency Alert Law
A national emergency alert system was set in motion by a law President Bush signed Fri. giving the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) 6 months to set up warning procedures. The wireless industry embraced the law’s voluntary process as preferable to a mandatory path being considered in an FCC rulemaking. Carriers opting out of the system must tell customers only that devices they use won’t carry the alerts.
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CTIA Pres. Steve Largent wrote in July to Senate Homeland Security Committee leaders backing a measure finally appended to the port security bill. The law has “rational” provisions creating an effective partnership between govt. and industry, Largent said when the Warning, Alert & Response Network (WARN) Act was adopted as an amendment. The law funding of a network for sending alerts via cellphone, BlackBerry, digital, analog, cable and satellite TV and radio, sirens and non-traditional media like “radios-on-a- stick.”
The law requires the Dept. of Homeland Security to set up an office to adopt technical standards and create a testing program for the system. Sixty days after DHS sets standards, the FCC must start a proceeding to let a commercial mobile service licensee send system alerts. Carriers that decide not to participate must tell customers “in a clear and conspicuous manner that the devices they sell will not transmit alerts,” according to a bill analysis.
Carriers must notify the FCC on whether they wish to send alerts 30 days after the FCC proceeding ends. Carriers have the right to advertise that they transmit alerts, and to install technology letting customers block alerts. The law also authorizes the FCC to license technologies other than commercial mobile services. System participants are exempt for liability from any act related to “harm from the transmission of, or failure to transmit” an alert. DHS must report yearly to Congress on progress and present a 5-year implementation timetable.
The GAO must “periodically” audit the National Alert Office. The law mandates a working group of federal state and local govt. officials, emergency managers and private sector representatives develop system standards. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration may give grants running up to 5 years to install EAS technologies in rural areas. The FCC said at a July hearing it would work with Congress to provide “the best possible warning system to our citizens.”