Wireless carriers participating in the wireless emergency alerting system shouldn’t...

House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Emergency Management in prepared testimony. The subcommittee held a hearing Tuesday on the effectiveness of the U.S. public alert system. “While IPAWS may help modernize the distribution of alerts on other communications platforms, CMAS [Commercial Mobile Alert Service] is the proper path to deliver and modernize emergency alerts provided over wireless networks,” he said. “We hope you will keep this in mind as you consider legislative efforts” to update the alert system, he said. Mobile DTV broadcasts will be a good way to reach mobile devices with emergency alerts, said Suzanne Goucher, president of the Maine Association of Broadcasters according to a copy of her remarks. “Unlike the still nascent CMAS, which provides only short text messages via cell phones, a mobile DTV EAS system would provide a far more comprehensive and informative experience,” she said. Her recommendation for the pending IPAWS bill, HR-2049, was to eliminate the sunset provision associated with the IPAWS advisory committee it would establish. Making the committee permanent and requiring it to meet on a regular basis would “ensure that the lines of communication remain open and ideas for continuous improvement to the system have a forum in which they can be heard. Meanwhile, as the committee considers IPAWS legislation, it should keep in mind the costs and potential delays associated with changing plans that are currently being implemented, said Bill Check, senior vice president of science and technology for the NCTA. “Any common alerting and warning protocols, standards technology and operating procedures that FEMA would be required to adopt pursuant to new legislation should recognize and incorporate the work that has already been done and should be consistent with existing regulatory directives which have driven our efforts over the past several years,” he said. New legislation should also recognize that distributors aren’t capable of translating alerts into multiple languages, he said. “Legislation should make clear that the obligation to make messages accessible should rest with the message originator,” he said.