Wireless Industry Lost on Several Fronts in WEA Rules
The FCC released its report and order and Further NPRM on changes to rules for wireless emergency alerts (WEAs), explaining why in several cases it had overruled carrier objections. The FCC approved the order Thursday over a partial dissent by Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who highlighted industry concerns (see 1609290060).
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The order cites concerns by carriers that requiring that URLs be embedded in alerts could lead to network congestion. The opposite is true, the FCC said. “The weight of the record supports our conclusion that this action will be more likely to reduce network loading than to increase it,” the order said. The public already accesses public safety and other sites when alerts are broadcast, in a process known as “milling,” the agency said. “URLs embedded in WEA Alert Messages could actually reduce network congestion by channeling the public’s milling behavior through a single authoritative and comprehensive resource.”
CTIA also argued carriers should have to keep a log of alerts for only three months -- instead, the FCC is requiring a year. The agency proposed a three-year log in its initial NPRM. “Compliance with these minimal alert logging requirements will be technically feasible,” the FCC said. “The approach we adopt today is a more flexible and less burdensome alternative to that which we proposed in the WEA NPRM, and allows Participating [alert] Providers to take a variety of approaches to achieve compliance.” Some carriers already log alerts, the order said.
Carriers won on other fronts. The FCC said participating alert providers should be allowed to continue to transmit 90-character messages on legacy networks “until those networks are retired,” even though 360-character messages are now allowed. Many public safety commenters suggested carriers could transmit 360-character alerts on legacy networks by linking together, or concatenating, multiple 90-character messages, the FCC said. “We are convinced by AT&T that message concatenation would be problematic because ‘[m]essages are not guaranteed to be received by the device in the correct order,’ which would likely cause confusion that would be exacerbated during the pendency of multiple alerts,” the commission said.
The FCC agreed with participating carriers they shouldn't be responsible for alert message translation. “Rather, emergency managers are the entities best equipped to determine message content, including content in other languages,” the order said.
An accompanying FNPRM looks at additional changes. Among other areas probed, the FCC asks about the use of alerts for earthquake warnings. When the agency sought specific comment on that issue, the wireless industry in general said WEAs couldn’t be used for warnings because of technical issues (see 1605100054). The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions agreed in a subsequent filing (see 1607200062). O’Rielly complained Thursday that the issue was still being examined.
“We seek comment on any technical issues that prioritizing earthquake alerts in transit might present for Participating [alert] Providers, and on when this standard could feasibly be achieved,” the FCC said. “In the alternative, we seek comment on whether a different Alert Message latency requirement would strike a more appropriate balance between the costs of prioritization and the benefits of earthquake early warning.” The agency sought specific comment on an AT&T complaint that using WEAs for earthquake warnings would require a “re-design of the entire system.”