Broadcasters and MVPDs Should Prepare and Invest Now for CAP, FCC and FEMA Officials Say
All emergency alert system participants should prepare now for a new EAS format to send messages using the Internet, said FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. They said that’s true even though the FCC Friday delayed the compliance deadline for all public and private radio and TV stations, DBS and satellite radio providers and multichannel video programming distributors. Those EAS participants must now be ready by June 30 to get and send alerts in Common Alerting Protocol, which FEMA developed, the FCC Public Safety Bureau has said. Government officials said at an FCBA lunch Thursday that they're working with PBS, NPR and state emergency managers on matters including a Nov. 9 nationwide test of EAS using the current alerting standard.
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The commission has repeatedly told EAS participants to get ready for CAP by setting aside the necessary money for upgrades, said Chief Tom Beers of the bureau’s Policy and Licensing Division. “There isn’t going to be a lot of sympathy for people who say we haven’t had adequate time to make the capital investment in this equipment,” he said. “Nothing is not an option going forward here,” Beers said. “If your encoder-decoder dies, we expect you to replace it” and not wait for the CAP deadline, he said of equipment at the end of its effective life. “It’s not an obligation you could duck,” Beers said. “I urge people to take this June 30 deadline seriously.”
"Not everybody is happy with that decision, to tell you the truth,” by the bureau to issue the nine-month delay, Beers said. “Some manufacturers were concerned we were sending a wobbly signal” to EAS participants “about getting serious with CAP compliance,” he said: “And I'm not so sure FEMA was all that happy, either.” FEMA officials were said to have been upset (CD Sept 19 p8).
FEMA is sticking to its own schedule to have the CAP Internet service available, so EAS participants can get test warning messages from a website, agency officials said. “Even though the time line for CAP has been extended, we, FEMA … are staying on the same time line” for equipment testing and on the integrated public alert and warning system, said Wade Witmer, who helps run the agency’s IPAWS program. “We are still on schedule to have that service available” for EAS participants wanting to “poll” from it by month’s end, he said.
Part of the goal of the first nationwide EAS test is to “save it,” from lack of attention paid by some EAS participants and emergency agencies, said Manny Centeno, FEMA test project manager. “We know that it’s been left out there, to kind of operate on its own, and we want to correct that,” he said: Some “folks have forgotten the basics” in terms of technical know-how for the system. “We believe radio, cable and satellite will stand a much better chance of surviving” in any emergency, in the extremely unlikely event there’s ever a nationwide alert activated by the president, Centeno said. Greg Cook, associate chief of the Policy and Licensing Division, said the FCC will issue guidance in the next several weeks on how EAS participants can submit reports about the Nov. 9 test electronically to the commission. Broadcasters including PBS will distribute public service announcements about that exercise, he said.
One issue for broadcast and MVPD EAS participants is some lack of Internet access at stations or headends, said Director Ed Czarnecki of Monroe Electronics. “It is not a matter of you plug it in, you're done,” he said of installing new gear. “It is going to take a while to provision” because it needs an Internet connection, Czarnecki said, estimating about 70 percent of EAS participants have gear that’s ready or that could get a software update. “We've seen some signs of a chilling effect already,” with certain EAS participants holding off necessary work, he said based on conversations with other manufacturers, with “preparation seeming to move backwards.” Some emergency managers “are taking a wait-and-see position” on EAS because they're more interested in mobile device alerting, Czarnecki said, so there may be a “spike in emergency manager interest around April when FEMA introduces” the Commercial Mobile Alert System.
Broadcasters are doing their part, an NAB executive said. Some state broadcast associations are giving members money to help pay for encoder-decoder gear, said Senior Director Kelly Williams.