New York City officials said the city has made progress on wireless emergency alerts and thanked the FCC for pushing carriers for better geotargeting of alerts in November, said an ex parte on a meeting with Public Safety Bureau staff. “The City provided the FCC with an overview of Notify NYC, our official emergency communications system, in particular, the steps the City has taken over the past two years to implement multilingual alerting,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-91: “Beginning in July 2019, Notify NYC will offer most of its messages in 13 languages.”
The full FCC approved a $2,000 settlement with a Seward, Alaska, FM station over “actions that undermine the effectiveness of the Emergency Alert System,” said an order and consent decree in Thursday’s Daily Digest. Two years ago, the full commission unanimously approved a $66,000 notice of apparent liability against licensee Kenai Educational Media over the offense (see 1707190040). The amount was reduced “because of the impact of such a fine on Kenai as a small entity and on KIBH’s ability as the only full-service radio station licensed to serve the Seward area to provide public safety alerts,” the order said. Kenai’s noncommercial educational KIBH wasn’t monitoring EAS sources, didn't make EAS information available to staff, and violated staffing and public file rules, the NAL said. Under the settlement, Kenai must appoint a compliance officer and make regular reports to the FCC on its compliance with the rules until Feb. 1, 2022.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought alert originators willing to participate in a targeted test of the wireless emergency alert system “in late 2019 and/or early 2020.” The bureau “seeks to better understand WEA performance, particularly with respect to the accuracy of … geographic targeting capabilities,” Tuesday's public notice said. Carriers face a Nov. 30 deadline for delivering alerts to the target area specified by the alert originator with no more than a one-tenth of a mile overshoot (see 1801300027). “Interested alert originators should submit an expression of interest in PS Docket Nos. 15-91 and 15-94 that identifies how they meet these criteria, as well as any additional information that may be relevant to our consideration of potential alerting partner(s),” the bureau said.
California’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) may conduct an end-to-end wireless emergency alert test June 27, 11 a.m. to noon PDT in San Diego County, the FCC said. The Public Safety Bureau conditionally granted a waiver Friday in docket 15-91 to permit commercial mobile providers to participate. A backup test would happen July 12 between the same hours. It’s the second in a series to assess feasibility of using WEA with the early earthquake warning system, which requires notifications to be sent within seconds of earthquake generation. Cal OES says data from tests will help to refine integration, decrease latency and increase accuracy, the bureau said. While conditioning waiver on appropriate public outreach, the bureau found “good cause to permit Cal OES to test the feasibility of using WEA to warn the public of such destructive events.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) won't be ready to support recent improvements to wireless emergency alerts by Monday, the FCC Public Safety Bureau said. In April, the commission reminded carriers (see this publication, May 1) that revised rules for wireless emergency alerts, approved in 2016 (see 1609290060), were to take effect May 1. That notice said IPAWS expected to be ready to support the new features on June 10. IPAWS recently notified the FCC it won’t meet that deadline, the notice said. One of the features is the ability to conduct state or local tests. “Until such time as IPAWS will support and deploy the State/Local WEA Test option, alert originators may not conduct an end-to-end WEA test to the public without first obtaining a waiver of the Commission’s rules,” Friday's publican notice said: “The Bureau will issue a Public Notice announcing when IPAWS is available to fully support these WEA enhancements and providing further guidance on their use.”
Two state bills about 911 testing cleared a California Senate panel at a Tuesday meeting. The Energy and Utilities Committee unanimously cleared AB-956 to clarify automatic dialing devices may be used once a year to test 911 for data accuracy and emergency alert capabilities, and AB-1079 to allow phone companies to share phone numbers without consent to public safety for testing 911 response and emergency alert systems. The Assembly-passed bills need a full Senate vote.
Emergency alert system participants must renew their identifying information in the EAS test reporting system (ETRS) by July 3, before the planned Aug. 7 2:20 p.m. EST national EAS test, the FCC Public Safety Bureau said in a public notice Monday (see Ref:1905230030]). ETRS is open now and accepting 2019 filings, the PN said. The August test will involve only the legacy “daisy chain” system and won’t include the Integrated Public Alert Warning System, the PN said. The backup date for the test is Aug. 21, the PN said.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau approved limited waiver for the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) to test its wireless emergency alert system. The test is to start June 22 at 11 a.m. EDT, with a backup of the same time the following day. “In light of the heightened attendance and security expected for the National July 4th Celebration this year, we are persuaded by the HSEMA Letter that the proposed WEA test will help prepare the District of Columbia Government and HSEMA, as well as tourists and residents alike, in the event of an incident or emergency during the festivities,” said a Wednesday order: “We are also persuaded that there is value in allowing the end-to-end WEA test to use a ‘live’ WEA event code, as opposed to the State/Local WEA Test code, because of the importance of ensuring the reliability of WEA as a means of providing critical information in the event of an emergency.”
The 2019 national test of the emergency alert system is scheduled for Aug. 7, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a letter to the FCC posted Thursday in docket 15-94. Aug. 21 is the backup. Though the letter gives the initial test date as taking place in 2016, FEMA officials told us that’s a typo. “This year FEMA proposes to originate the test via the National Public Warning System composed of the FEMA designated Primary Entry Point (PEP) facilities,” the letter said. “The intent of conducting the test in this fashion is to determine the capability of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to deliver messages to the public in event that dissemination via internet is not available.” Due to the use of this method, the test won’t include the richer message text and multilingual options available when messages are delivered using the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. “As in past years the national EAS test message will look and sound very much like the regular Required Monthly Test (RMT) messages broadcast every month by all EAS Participants,” the letter said.
ATIS said Thursday it has completed changes to wireless emergency alerts standards. The FCC last year imposed a Nov. 30 deadline for carriers to more accurately “geotarget” alerts (see 1801300027). The new version of WEA will more precisely target warnings, ATIS said. It also made changes: “1) defining a set of requirements for the behavior of the mobile devices when a WEA alert message is received; 2) defining the interface between the Federal Alert Gateway and the Commercial Mobile Service Provider Gateway for WEA alerts; and 3) providing a Public Warning System Specification, describing the use of the Evolved Packet System Public Warning System for the delivery of … messages.” The new standards were “delivered on time to meet deadline-driven FCC requirements,” said ATIS President Susan Miller.