KANSAS CITY -- The FCC is on the trail of public safety licensees who haven’t filed 800 MHz rebanding plans or sought a waiver from June’s reconfiguration deadline. Meanwhile, in some areas licensees are ready to reband but have had to stop because systems they're tied into are not, industry players said this week at the APCO annual conference.

A national emergency communications plan released Thursday fills alert system gaps, the Department of Homeland Security said. “More than 50,000 independent agencies across the Nation routinely use emergency communications, and each of these agencies is governed by the laws of its respective jurisdiction or area of responsibility,” the plan said. “In such an environment, collaborative planning among all levels of government is critical for ensuring effective and fully coordinated preparedness and response.” The plan is available on the department’s website, http://www.dhs.gov.

Broadcasters’ efforts to put more of their receivers in mobile devices like cellphones, PDAs and laptops continue, now that the FCC has issued rules on the Commercial Mobile Alert Service this month. Broadcasters lobbied FCC commissioners on the public-safety benefits of putting FM receivers in mobile phones (CD June 20 p7). Those efforts weren’t acknowledged overtly in a July 8 FCC order on the CMAS rules, but broadcasters believe carriers can use the FM system for alerts within the framework laid out by the FCC, Emmis CEO Jeffrey Smulyan said in an interview. “My understanding is that our solution fits within the rules,” he said. Meanwhile, TV broadcasters’ efforts to develop a mobile DTV system are leading them to discussions with mobile carriers as well.

The FCC will not require wireless carriers to test a new emergency alert system for cellphones by sending warnings to all subscribers who otherwise would get alerts, said an order released late Tuesday. But the FCC does expect carriers to be able to test commercial mobile service alert system (CMAS) messages’ ability to reach their targets, it said. The FCC approved its latest order and rulemaking implementing wireless handset alerting rules developed by the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee.

WSBC(AM) Bennettsville, S.C., was fined $12,000 for lacking functional emergency alert system gear and violating other FCC rules, said an Enforcement Bureau forfeiture notice issued Tuesday.

Public safety has concerns about carrier reluctance to road test a warning system for sending emergency alerts to cellphones by sending test alerts. During meetings of the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee, which drew up rules for a national alerting system, carriers and equipment makers said they opposed sending test messages to subscribers. TIA reiterated its concerns in a statement last week. Art Botterell,, manager, Community Warning System, with the Contra Costa County, Calif., Sheriff’s Office, and a member of the advisory committee, said carriers expressed anxiety about testing during meetings of the group. “Nobody really knows what the public reaction to cellular alerts will be, in particular, how many secondary phone calls will be stimulated, and, of course, how many of those will be to 911,” Botterell told us. “It makes sense to move carefully into this new territory and a lot of the necessary reliability testing can be done behind the scenes in the system without actually putting test alerts on the public’s cellphones,” he said. “But at some point we're going to need the ability to do at least limited public testing, or else the first time we use the system for a real emergency it'll be a gigantic social and technological experiment.” FCC sources said the testing issue has yet to receive substantial attention among commissioners. TIA wants to work with public safety to develop some way to test alerts to cellphones, Patrick Sullivan, its director of technical and governmental affairs, said Tuesday. “If there are proposals that are out there that don’t strain the networks and don’t confuse cellphone users, we'd like to hear about that,” he said. He said carriers believe tests can be conducted between the alert initiator and aggregator/gateway, but they have concerns about testing similar to that conducted by broadcasters. “This would be a brand new dynamic where the public probably would not be as educated about the likelihood of receiving test messages [from wireless carriers] as they are about broadcast messages,” Sullivan said.

TIA opposes any testing of a new system for emergency cellphone alerts that involves test messages sent to cellphone users, it said Thursday. That position is consistent with the group’s stance as a participant in the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee that wrote rules for cellphone alerts, a TIA spokesman said Friday. “With FEMA’s willingness to serve as the Alert Aggregator/Gateway, the time is right for the FCC to create… testing rules prohibiting cellphone users from receiving test messages,” TIA President Grant Seiffert said. “Such testing could strain network resources and potentially alarm and confuse cellphone users.”

Broadcasters need to know wireless-industry economics to get additional FM receivers into mobile phones, a study ordered by the NAB found. It said making networks more open than they have been could speed up manufacturers’ adoption of the technology. “To have any success with operators, broadcasters must at least position FM-on-handsets as a major cost avoidance solution, if not an overall revenue enhancing opportunity,” wrote Joseph Kraemer, director of the Law and Economics Consulting Group, and attorney Richard Levine. The study was prepared for the NAB technology advisory program, working to include more broadcast receivers in consumer electronics devices (CD June 21/06 p15). Broadcasters might be able to convince some operators to call for FM receivers in their handsets if they can show it will save them money on emergency alerts, the study said. The FCC’s September deadline for carriers to opt in or out of the Commercial Mobile Alert System is an opportunity for broadcasters to show that they offer savings, the study said. That deadline probably will be pushed off because of delays at FEMA -- but broadcasters need to exploit the opportunity soon, because carriers already are exploring options with conventional vendors, the study said. “The further along that operators proceed without considering” FM with Radio Data System “as a potential solution, the more difficult it will be for broadcasters to intervene in the carriers’ decision processes,” the study said. Putting FM receivers into more phones would be good for broadcasters, consumers, carriers and manufacturers, NAB President David Rehr said. “We're confident that the implementation of a new FM-radio feature would result in rapid penetration.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said Friday it will serve as the unified aggregator and message gateway when wireless carriers send subscribers emergency alert system warnings. The move clears up a major question on the alert program (CD Feb 22 p1). FEMA will verify that alerts are from authorized senders, then transmit them to carriers.

The Department of Homeland Security’s indecision about whether it will adopt the common alerting protocol (CAP) for emergency alert system warnings and in what form CAP should take is slowing the progress of broadcasters and others in developing a more robust emergency alert system, officials said Monday during an FCC summit on the nation’s EAS. Meanwhile, broadcasters warned that they feel in danger of becoming irrelevant.