Storm warnings and other government alerts could go to search engines, online news feeds, social media and other Web outlets, broadcast and other industry officials said. They said that will be made possible when the Federal Emergency Management Agency soon starts a website for anyone to get real-time emergency alert system messages. Companies that don’t participate in EAS could get alerts from federal, state and municipal agencies that write them in a new FEMA format. Those websites could then distribute them online as narrowly or widely as they wish.

Major websites are interested in getting emergency alert system feeds becoming available over the Internet now that the government and EAS participants are implementing a new format, federal officials and broadcasters said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s integrated public alert and warning system makes it possible for websites to get real-time access to EAS messages, noted FEMA IPAWS Director Antwane Johnson on an agency webinar late Wednesday. Traditional EAS participants in the broadcasting and pay-TV industries are getting ready for the Common Alerting Protocol message format that distributes the alerts online, which the FCC has required be able to be received and passed on starting at month’s end, FEMA and FCC officials noted.

The FCC lacks authority for disabilities accessibility rules in areas where a committee of representatives of industry and those with problems seeing couldn’t agree, three associations said. CEA, NAB and NCTA were the only initial commenters by a 11:59 p.m. Tuesday deadline in dockets 12-107 and 12-108 on a Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee report on areas including device and user interface accessibility and getting emergency information. The associations said that just because the VPAAC couldn’t achieve consensus doesn’t mean regulation’s needed or lawful.

U.S. network operators’ privacy practices generally work, and the FCC has a role to play on the issue, Chairman Julius Genachowski said. Both the FCC and the FTC have “a very important role,” one that’s “in many respects” complementary, he said in a Q-and-A Tuesday at an FCBA luncheon. “In other respects they overlap,” Genachowski said of the agencies’ privacy roles, with the FCC focused on networks and “the FTC is more focused on apps.” He again said an update of the 1996 Telecom Act may be a good idea.

The FCC continues to have a relatively low backlog of cable requests for deregulation of video rates in local franchise areas, as few LFAs oppose them and the Media Bureau approves most within several months. The number of pending requests has about doubled from last summer (CD July 21 p4), the time of the previous Communications Daily review of effective competition petitions. Lawyers for cities and cable operators said the bureau is taking more time to review some requests, though it usually grants them when cities don’t protest. Honolulu is the only LFA now believed to be opposing any petition, this one by Time Warner Cable, said the lawyers. Boston and Comcast meanwhile have been trading filings over whether the bureau ought to stick with this year’s order revoking the company’s deregulation there.

Work on preparing for longer Internet Protocol addresses can guide energy-reduction and efficiency efforts, executives from the cable, content and consumer electronics industries said on a Brookings Institution panel. They said cable operators’ preparations that began several years ago for IPv6 are bearing fruit now that shorter IPv4 addresses are being exhausted. The IPv6 efforts can be a guide to all those industries’ work at an early stage to cut energy consumption and use power more efficiently, speakers said. Rivals will have to work together, and companies with their vendors, for the energy effort to be a success, executives at Intel, Comcast and its NBCUniversal business said.

The FCC would scale back viewability rules so most cable systems can distribute TV stations guaranteed carriage in HD format only, and not also in standard definition if cheap set-top boxes are offered, agency and industry officials said. A draft Media Bureau order circulated this week and awaiting votes from commissioners allows hybrid digital/analog systems to stop carrying must-carry stations in both formats in about six months, commission officials said Thursday. The order circulated Tuesday, exactly three weeks before the June 12 expiration of the last three-year extension of viewability rules..

BOSTON -- A market-based approach to antitrust oversight, rules and technology is sought by administration officials and regulators from both political parties. Rather than being based on method of distribution, policies and their underlying laws ought to be based on how products are used, they said in a Q-and-A by at a Cable Show luncheon Tuesday. FTC members of both parties and NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said voluntary codes of conduct are a way to ensure consumers’ online privacy.

BOSTON -- Usage-based data pricing can spur competition in broadband, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said of ISPs’ moves to systems not always charging flat prices regardless of consumption. NCTA CEO Michael Powell asked Genachowski about the practice in a Q-and-A Tuesday at The Cable Show, noting ISPs of all sorts, including cable operators, are starting to charge based on consumption. “Business model innovation is very important, particularly in new areas like broadband,” Genachowski replied. The commission’s 2010 net neutrality order allowed such practices. Nonprofits that backed the order criticized Genachowski’s remarks, while AT&T supported the comments.

BOSTON -- Updating the Telecom Act or 1992 Cable Act is on the radar screens of aides from both parties on the House and Senate Commerce committees, they told a panel Monday at the Cable Show. They generally agreed that any update to the 1996 law could take years, and some said a more piecemeal approach could move on Capitol Hill more quickly but still would take time. Representatives from both parties said their bosses backed the FCC’s approach to reforming the USF, with an aide to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., saying that if the commission doesn’t keep up its momentum on the contribution side, the Hill could eventually step in.