Wireless emergency alerting has a ways to go, especially after the false missile alert that created panic in Hawaii in January (see 1801160054 and 1803160042), Chairman Ajit Pai said at an FCC panel Tuesday. “There's a lot of potential in the system, some of which consumers have come to realize,” Pai said. “We do have some improvements to make.” He expressed hope the lesson learned would inform other future changes to alerting systems. Others agreed there's a ways to go.
Cities need multimedia messages to make the wireless emergency alert system “a strong and adaptable tool,” said Houston Public Safety and Homeland Security Director George Buenik in a letter to FCC commissioners posted Monday in docket 15-91. After Hurricane Harvey, Houston couldn’t use WEA multimedia messaging to issue evacuation notices, Buenik said. “We could have better targeted those in the evacuation area and delivered precise instructions to those who needed the information the most.” Pictures can be more direct than text alone, and also would improve accessibility to the deaf and hard of hearing, he said.
House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Leonard Lance, R-N.J., filed his Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement (Pirate) Act Tuesday, drawing praise from FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and the New Jersey Broadcasters Association. The bill, which Lance circulated in draft form earlier this year, would increase fines for illegal pirate operations from $10,000 per violation to $100,000 per day per violation, up to a maximum of $2 million. It would streamline FCC enforcement to empower state and local law enforcement agencies' to undertake anti-pirate operations (see 1803150055 and 1803210035). House Communications examined the then-draft measure during a March hearing (see 1803220055). “This bill rightfully increases the penalties, requires regular enforcement sweeps, and augments the tools available to the Commission, which are woefully inadequate and outdated, to deal with illegal pirate broadcasters,” O'Rielly said. “The bill notably excludes legitimate Part 15 operations, otherwise known as radio hobbyists. ... I think the PIRATE Act has a great chance of becoming law.” NJBA asked "Congress to direct the FCC to increase its pirate enforcement budget and activities and to offer legislation and devote the resources necessary to eliminating the pirate radio problem" in New Jersey and New York City during a visit to Capitol Hill, said President Paul Rotella. “Most people do not understand the very real danger pirate radio operators put the public in through their illegal transmissions. These pirate radio stations cause interference to” the emergency alert system and “FAA frequencies that could interfere with airline communications and also create excessive, unmeasured RF radiation to residents and businesses in the buildings they operate in, which may present significant health concerns.”
The FCC designated the license of KLSX(FM), Rozet, Wyoming, for hearing over a record of “extended periods of silence,” said a hearing designation order (HDO) released Monday. KLSX went silent after one day of operation just after its license was issued to Family Voice Communications in 2010 and “has remained primarily silent since then,” the order said. The hearing designation order had been set for Thursday's commissioners' meeting. The agency released an agenda deletion notice a few hours after the release of the order Monday. The station has operated just a few days a year for the bulk of its existence, a total of 396 operational days out of eight years, the order said. The vast majority of that total is recent -- the station has had a string of 254 operational days since August, the order said. That operational stretch begins just after the FCC designated another station’s license for hearing over extended silences (see 1708160032). The proceeding against KLSX will be a “paper hearing” because the FCC hasn’t found any credibility issues with the facts of the proceeding, the order said. The hearing won’t involve discovery, but the agency requested copies from Family Voice of program logs and emergency alert system records. The company has 30 days after the HDO is published in the Federal Register to provide those records, and 60 days to file a response, the order said. KLSX didn’t comment.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau is acting to increase the use of the Integrated Public Alert Warning System (IPAWS) to propagate emergency alert system warnings, rather than the legacy “daisychain” system, said the bureau’s report on the 2017 Nationwide EAS test, released Friday. The internet-based CAP (common alerting protocol) alerts sent through IPAWS contain more information, have better audio and allow multi-language alerts, the report said. The test shows EAS participants have “improved in their ability to successfully alert the public,” the report said, though it also shows a drop from 2016 in test participation, and a Federal Emergency Management Agency report on the nationwide test released last week questioned the accuracy of the results reporting.
Officials from Puerto Rico, Texas and the U.S. Coast Guard said last year’s massive storms showed the fault lines in the communications infrastructure. Information supplied by the FCC sometimes didn’t keep up with the disasters as they unfolded, speakers said during an FCC workshop Friday. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the FCC wants to learn from what happened last year. Puerto Rico is struggling to recover from Maria, which hit it in September (see 1803160051).
House and Senate Commerce leaders told us they aim to continue work on telecom infrastructure legislation and tackle a raft of other communications policy issues, after their success just before the recess in enacting a range of telecom policy provisions as part of the $1.3 trillion FY 2018 omnibus spending bill (see 1803210041, 1803210068, 1803220048 and 1803230038). How the committees will prioritize those issues remained unclear last week, though the lawmakers and lobbyists acknowledged that follow-up on last week’s twin hearings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the Cambridge Analytica data privacy controversy (see 1804100054 and 1804110065) could be a lingering factor. It’s beginning to look increasingly less likely that Capitol Hill will be able to produce any communications legislation of the same scope as what lawmakers accomplished in the omnibus, in part because of the dwindling legislative timeline before the November midterm elections, lobbyists said.
State Emergency Communications Committees have until May 4 to amend their state emergency alert system plans to include summaries of actions taken to provide multilingual EAS messages, said an FCC Public Safety Bureau public notice Wednesday in docket 04-296 on how to make the amendments. The requirement is part of the FCC's data collection on multilingual EAS, which survived a recent court challenge from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (see 1802200033).
The FCC unanimously voted to combine the Emergency Alert System (EAS) Test Reporting System with an online filing system for state EAS plans, said an order released Tuesday in docket 15-94. The new system, called the Alert Reporting System (ARS), will “improve the mechanics of filing state plans at this agency” and “is a step forward,” said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement released with the order. ARS will replace paper filing requirements, lower the burdens on State Emergency Communications Committees and make it easier for entities such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency to access state plans, the order said. The ARS order also requires state EAS plans to be more uniform to make them easier to access and upload to an online system. “State EAS Plans currently lack consistent structure and content,” the order said. “An online filing system using uniform and consistent terminology will facilitate the input, analysis, and related uses of the Plan information.” A lack of uniformity among state EAS plans complicated the results of the first nationwide EAS test, the order said. Rosenworcel praised the order for giving EAS “some needed care and attention” but said it doesn't go far enough. “The FCC can do more by acting as a convening force to report and incentivize best practices for emergency alerting,” Rosenworcel said. She also said the agency should address other outstanding EAS issues such as false alerts “with dispatch.” After “the false emergency alert earlier this year in Hawaii, this work should be our priority,” Rosenworcel said.
The Puerto Rico Broadcasters Association thinks waiving broadcaster minor change rules for FM translators there and on the U.S. Virgin Islands "will save money that currently does not exist and is needed to get back on air" after hurricanes, PRBA Vice President Eduardo Rivero told us Friday through his lawyer. The previous day, the group asked the FCC Media Bureau Audio Division to allow more time for AM outlets on the islands seeking regulatory reprieve to resolve conflicts with others also seeking FM translators (see Ref:1804050047]). "There is precedent by the FCC of waiving translator rules for Puerto Rico to advance the establishment of FM translators locally," Rivero said now. Waiving the three-up or -down rule, which limits moves to no further than a third adjacent channel, "will provide additional outlets for the emergency alert system in the local communities served by the FM translators for future events," he added.