The high-profile FCC net neutrality comment period, spanning months going into the August congressional recess (see 1705180029), could distract lawmakers from other telecom priorities, Democrats told us. Lawmakers of both parties hope to avoid such derailment, but Democrats said they plan to commit time to mobilizing net neutrality defenders to comment. Hill reaction split along partisan lines to last week’s 2-1 NPRM vote.
The FCC will vote June 22 on a proposal to create a special “Blue Alert” emergency alert system code for notifications about threats to law enforcement, Chairman Ajit Pai announced Friday at a news conference at the Department of Justice. Operating similar to an Amber Alert, the new code “would be used by authorities in states across the country to notify the public through television and radio of threats to law enforcement and to help apprehend dangerous suspects,” said an FCC news release. “My proposal would give state and local authorities that option to use a dedicated alert code to send the warnings to the public, broadcast, cable, satellite, and wireline video networks,” Pai said. The draft NPRM was circulated to the eighth floor Thursday, Pai said. Twenty-seven states already have blue alert plans, but the FCC proposal would create a “nationwide framework” that states could adopt, the release said. The FCC’s Blue Alert proposal stems from federal legislation, the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act of 2015, the release said. The act, “directs cooperation with the FCC,” and is being implemented by DOJ’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office, the release said. “The COPS Office has expressed the need for a dedicated EAS code for Blue Alerts,” the release said. The Blue Alerts may provide extra warning for police and enable them to defend themselves or catch dangerous criminals, said acting Director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Chief Tom Homan at the news conference, saying Friday was “a good day for law enforcement, a better day for American communities.”
House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., has “concerns” about transition to the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard and its impact on affordability, he said at a hearing Wednesday on emergency alerts and featuring testimony from NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny and Qualcomm Director-Engineering Farrokh Khatibi. Chairman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., pressed Matheny on whether NAB prefers mandates or market forces to guide the transition. “We are not looking for a mandate,” Matheny told her.
The FCC could consider a "phased approach" to the transition to ATSC 3.0 and could be open to changes to broadcaster public interest requirements, said Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey at an ATSC conference (see 1705170033) Wednesday, saying the agency is "drilling down" into comments on the ATSC 3.0 NPRM. ATSC 3.0 is a "top priority," Carey said, saying the recent comments created a "robust record" and staff are working on the new standard as fast as they can.
An NAB official will peg approval of ATSC 3.0 to emergency alerts during a Wednesday hearing on the topic and warn that a botched repacking after the broadcast TV incentive auction could interfere. “If the FCC approves Next Gen TV, a television broadcaster will be able to simultaneously deliver geo-targeted, rich media alerts to an unlimited number of enabled fixed, mobile and handheld devices across their entire coverage area,” NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny will testify. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said he hopes for commission approval of ATSC 3.0 by year’s end.
Testifying at the House Communications Subcommittee’s Wednesday hearing on emergency alerts will be NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny; CGM Advisors CEO Chris Guttman-McCabe, a former CTIA official; and Qualcomm Director-Engineering Farrokh Khatibi. A GOP memo, dated Monday, said the hearing is part of a broader look at emergency communications: “Earlier this year, FirstNet established a public-private partnership for the deployment of a nationwide wireless broadband network for the Nation’s First Responders and steady progress is being made in the deployment of next generation 911 networks. This hearing will examine the third prong of public safety communications -- emergency alerting -- including its current state and its future against the backdrop of these and other evolving technologies.” It included sections detailing the emergency alert system, ATSC 3.0 and wireless emergency alerts. “In addition to EAS and WEA, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have emerged as mechanisms for emergency communications,” the memo said. “Extensive work has been undertaken and continues in both academia and public safety to ascertain the impact and use of social media in times of emergency and as an alerting tool.”
The 11-year span between the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council’s filing of a petition on multilingual emergency alert system messages and the FCC denying that petition was a major focus of a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday. Judge Patricia Millett called the delay "dramatic” and the wait was the subject of several questions by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who said the commission was “moving slowly.”
The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council will take on the FCC over multilingual emergency alert system (EAS) messages in oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday, where the MMTC is seen as unlikely to prevail, several attorneys told us. It's the latest salvo in a 12-year effort (see 1604060068) to get the FCC to require broadcasters to issue multilingual emergency alerts, originally inspired by the dearth of emergency information in Spanish after Hurricane Katrina. In 2016, the FCC updated the EAS system and denied MMTC’s requests in an order that required broadcasters to report on their efforts to send out multilingual EAS messages but not actually make such efforts.
Wireless carriers want to include embedded, “clickable” links in wireless emergency alerts but warned the FCC against mandates for that functionality without adequate feasibility testing. CTIA said it contacted aides for the three FCC commissioners on the topic. “CTIA continues to urge the FCC and other governmental stakeholders to be mindful of the potential limitations of embedded reference functionality beyond the control of wireless carriers,” said a Friday filing in docket 15-91. “For example, last year, the National Hurricane Center website was not available for a period of time during Hurricane Matthew.” CTIA also emphasized that work remains on standards for alerts. “While the wireless industry worked diligently to complete the necessary standards work within a few months after adoption of the rule, implementation by handset manufacturers and operating system providers will be necessary before consumers will be able to ‘click’ on embedded references,” CTIA said.
The 2016 nationwide emergency alert test showed emergency alert system (EAS) officials should focus on the integrated public alert warning system (IPAWS) as the primary source of alerts, use the older over-the-air system as a redundant backup, improve compliance with its requirements, and do targeted outreach to “Low Power broadcasters and other EAS Participants with poor performance” said the FCC Public Safety Bureau in a report on the test, issued Friday (see 1612280045). Though the test showed the effectiveness of the IPAWS alerts and the “vast majority” of over 20,000 participants received and retransmitted the test alert, there’s still room to improve, the report said. The September test was also a test of Spanish-language alerts. Spanish language alerts were available only on IPAWS, but stations are required to retransmit the first alert they receive, whether from IPAWS or over-the air from another broadcaster upstream in the “daisy chain” of EAS stations, EAS officials told us. Stations that received the alert first from another broadcast station didn't have the option to transmit in Spanish, even if they served a Spanish-language audience. Over half the alerts in the test were triggered through the over-the-air system, rather than IPAWS, the report said. The IPAWS alert also delivers other content, such as text files, that isn't available in the over-the-air alert. “In light of the additional capabilities offered by IP-based alerts, the Commission should facilitate and encourage the use of IPAWS as the primary source of alerts nationwide,” the report said. Many of the stations that didn’t retransmit the test alert did so because of equipment errors or not following EAS requirements, the report said. The FCC should “take measures to improve EAS Participants’ compliance with and understanding” of the rules, the report said.