FCC Fields More EAS Waivers Ahead of Saturday Deadline
The FCC received more petitions from broadcasters and cable operators seeking to be let out of new Emergency Alert System common alerting protocol (CAP) obligations that were set to take effect Saturday. Some parties told the commission they needed a waiver because of the lack of available broadband service at their operations. Others said they couldn’t afford the equipment and costs associated with maintaining it. Some parties have equipment ordered, but manufacturing backlogs mean they won’t receive the gear until after the deadline. The waivers are in docket 04-296 (http://xrl.us/bndbh7).
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About 10 percent of Sage Alerting System’s total sales for its new CAP-compliant EAS gear occurred in the final six weeks before the June 30 deadline, Sage President Harold Price said in an interview. “I think all the manufacturers got hit by more activity than they were expecting,” he said. But within a few weeks everyone who ordered gear should have received it, he said. However, commission officials have made it clear that to the industry this weekend’s deadline shouldn’t have come as a surprise and would look critically at any waiver requests, he said.
"I think everyone should be a little patient on this,” said Jim Gabbert, chairman of California’s state emergency communications committee. “It just seems to me reason should prevail as well as a little patience, but it looks like the commission has run out of that,” he said.
Orders were coming into Monroe Electronics as late as Friday morning, said Ed Czarnecki, the EAS equipment manufacturer’s senior director of strategy and regulatory affairs. “I would also expect some additional orders after the June 30 deadline depending on how the FCC rules on some of these waiver requests,” he said. “We're doing everything we can to work collaboratively with the customers and the government agencies involved,” he said.
As customers install the equipment, some are running into challenges integrating it with the IT security on their internal networks, Czarnecki and Price each said. The CAP devices work by polling an Integrated Public Alert and Warning System server (IPAWS) for alert information over the Internet. In the event of an alert, the IPAWS server may direct the device to another online source for an audio or audiovisual alert, Czarnecki said. “Who knows what you may be bringing down onto your network,” he said. “From a cybersecurity perspective, live gets very interesting,” he said. “The Internet is a dangerous world. What you're doing is connecting an appliance to the Internet that’s going to poll frequently to a third-party server.”
Some parties told the FCC they just can’t afford to upgrade their EAS equipment and meet the new obligations. Vendors said the devices can cost about $2,200 each up front. Operating them requires a broadband connection, which can be an additional ongoing expense, they said. West River Cable TV, which operates four small cable systems in South Dakota on some Indian reservations said it would cease operations if it doesn’t receive the waiver. “To the extent the Commission is able to determine that continuation of West River’s existing cable service in the four communities for at least the next twelve months without CAP-formatted EAS alerts serves the public interest more than termination of cable service entirely, West River will accept a waiver subject to a 12-month service continuation condition,” it said. “If the Commission determines to deny the present waiver request, West River will notify ... cable subscribers that it is terminating service within thirty days,” it said (http://xrl.us/bndbkj).