The FCC Enforcement Bureau has reached an $86,400 settlement with American Public Media Group over an incident in which false emergency alert system tones were transmitted by over 500 affiliated stations, said an order and consent decree Wednesday. The tones were broadcast in May 2024, during a BBC Witness History episode titled “Chasing the World’s Biggest Tornado,” the consent decree said. The settlement also requires APM to develop a compliance plan and send compliance reports to the FCC for two years.
The House Communications Subcommittee plans a hearing Tuesday on the Next Generation 911 Act (HR-6505) and six other public-safety communications measures, the Commerce Committee said Tuesday night. The newly refiled HR-6505 would appropriate an undefined amount of funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades for FY 2026-30. NG911 advocates have been pressing Congress to identify a new funding source after Republican lawmakers decided against allocating future spectrum auction revenue for the tech upgrades in the July budget reconciliation package (see 2507080065).
Washington state senators are proposing to create an emergency notification system for public officials that would alert them about any confirmed targeted threat to any public official. SB-5853, prefiled Monday, cites the Minnesota shootings in June that killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband and seriously injured state Sen. John Hoffman (D) and his wife. "Had an emergency notification system been implemented in Minnesota, senator Hoffman and his wife could have been notified of representative Hortman and her husband's murder and taken whatever precautions necessary to avoid harm," according to the legislation. Sponsoring the bipartisan bill are Washington state Sen. Jeff Wilson (R) and 10 others.
The fight continues at the FCC over a NextNav proposal asking the regulator to reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band to enable a “terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and a Pericle study on potential interference filed by the Security Industry Association (see 2510230041).
Industry groups and companies don’t want the FCC to overhaul emergency alerting, but public safety communications officials are calling on the agency to expand alerting to streaming and additional devices, according to reply comments posted last week (docket 25-224) in response to an August NPRM (see 2508070037). CTIA, NAB, T-Mobile and alerting equipment manufacturer Digital Alert Systems said wireless emergency alerts (WEAs) and the emergency alert system (EAS) already meet the FCC’s objectives. However, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) said alerts need to be delivered through the media platforms that people most commonly use.
The New Jersey Office of Emergency Management would establish a hyperlocal text alert system for flood and severe weather conditions under legislation (AB-5993) introduced this week by Assemblyman Christopher Tully (D). The text alerts would integrate real-time reports from localities, flood sensors, river height monitors, localized emergency warning systems, the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management System, among other data sources. Those who opt in would receive information on rainfall levels, local river levels, water level rise, storm surge, reported flood damage and the location and severity of floods exceeding 1 foot of water. The bill was referred to the Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
Attorneys general from 18 states and the city of New York called on the FCC in a letter Friday to send already-approved rules for multilingual wireless emergency alerts to the Federal Register. The rules were issued in January by the Public Safety Bureau under the previous administration but haven’t been implemented in the intervening 10 months because they haven’t yet been published.
Broadcasters, MVPD groups and public safety entities largely agree that the FCC's plans to revamp emergency alerting are a good thing, but they differ on the direction they want those plans to take, according to comments filed in docket 25-224 by Thursday’s deadline.
House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui of California and other Democrats used a Tuesday subpanel hearing on public safety communications issues (see 2509090062) as a forum to again lambaste Republicans for rescinding CPB’s FY 2026 and FY 2027 funding. CPB supporters unsuccessfully argued in July against Congress rescinding the money by citing public broadcasters’ role in transmitting emergency alerts (see 2507090062).
Two top House Commerce Committee members filed a pair of bills Monday aimed at increasing the reliability of U.S. emergency communications networks. House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., refiled the Emergency Reporting Act and introduced the Kari’s Law Reporting Act. The Emergency Reporting Act would direct the FCC to issue reports and do field hearings after activating the disaster information reporting system. The Kari’s Law Reporting Act would mandate that the FCC report on the extent to which multi-line telephone system manufacturers and vendors are complying with the 2018 Kari’s Law requirement that such systems give direct access to 911 without the need to dial a prefix.