Comcast asked the FCC to extend a waiver from the government’s Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) requirements at some of its smallest and furthest-flung cable systems. In a letter to the agency’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau chief, the country’s largest cable operator requested another two months beyond the six it already got before it must comply with the requirements at those systems (http://xrl.us/bn77tk). The waiver is to expire Monday and covers about 0.2 percent of Comcast’s total subscriber base, it said. Comcast said the systems at issue still lack broadband hook ups, which are needed for CAP-compliant Emergency Alert System (EAS) connectivity. It said it has installed the necessary equipment -- Communications Laboratories’ Emergency Management Communications Network satellite system -- but it discovered interoperability and software problems while testing the system. Its EAS equipment vendors are already working on a software update, but “out of an abundance of caution, Comcast requests further time so as to accommodate any final unanticipated complications,” it said.
The Open Mobile Video Coalition published a document laying out use cases for non real-time broadcasts using the mobile DTV standard. The document (http://xrl.us/bn4y5x) describes how the mobile DTV standard can be used for clip-casting, VOD, creating a Web “microsite” with pre-defined content, delivering out-of-home digital signage and content, and apps and firmware upgrades. The document also described commercial applications such as power grid management and traffic control systems, as well as mobile emergency alert systems. “This is a natural evolution of the Mobile TV standard,” said Sterling Davis, chair of OMVC’s technical advisory group.
The National Weather Service issued 17 wireless emergency alerts (WEA) during superstorm Sandy, and one NWS/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration official said Wednesday that feedback from East Coast residents who received the text alert messages on their mobile phones was mostly positive. “We've had numerous reports of messages being sent within seconds, and only one or two reports of delays,” said Michael Gerber, NWS/NOAA Emerging Dissemination Technology Program Lead. The WEA broadcast system will need improvement in other areas of the country, particularly the West, but results on the East Coast are positive, he said during a FEMA webinar on its Internet-based integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS).
The FCC Enforcement Bureau ordered Richards TV Cable Co. to pay $10,000 for its “failure to install emergency alert system equipment at its cable systems in Jerusalem, Ohio,” a forfeiture order released Friday said (http://xrl.us/bnxnty). A February notice of apparent liability said the cable operator did not have such equipment during multiple inspections after 2008 (http://xrl.us/bnxnt2).
Hurricane Sandy began pounding the East Coast with high winds and rain this week, causing several governors to declare states of emergency and triggering widespread concern of outages. State commissions began watching as telcos, 911 centers, county officials and cable operators braced for the impact. The storm was expected to continue Tuesday, and the Office of Personnel Management said federal offices in the Washington area would for a second day be closed to the public (http://xrl.us/bnwozb).
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it’s temporarily suspending its monthly integrated public alert and warning system webinars for practitioners and developers due to a change in support personnel at the project management office. “The current plan is to resume the programs during November,” an e-mail from FEMA to the webinar mailing list said Thursday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) server and its backup were down for more than 24 hours over the weekend, according industry executives and several messages to an Emergency Alert System (EAS) listserv discussion group. Broadcasters’ EAS equipment connects to the IPAWS servers for Common Alerting Protocol alerts (CAP) through the Internet. Saturday morning, station EAS equipment began sending out messages that they could not communicate with the server, and the problem was not resolved until about 2:30 p.m. ET Sunday, said Richard Rudman, a core member of the Broadcast Warning Working Group.
Progress in the rollout by two broadcaster technology coalitions of mobile DTV, now commercially available to about half of Americans, was cited by senior House Communications Subcommittee members of both parties. Speaking at a Capitol Hill mobile DTV and mobile emergency alert system (M-EAS) demo Thursday, they said those new technologies’ use of spectrum already allocated to broadcasters helps meet increasing consumer demand for streaming video. Lawmakers recognized consumption of mobile DTV -- TV stations sending live shows to portable devices and as of this summer one model of Samsung cellphone on MetroPCS (CD Aug 10 p10) -- doesn’t use wireless spectrum or incur data consumption charges to cellphone subscribers.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to update its list of Internet Protocol integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS) developers (http://xrl.us/bnqhe6) to reflect uncertainty about whether vendors have completed successful tests of the system, a FEMA official said Wednesday on an agency webinar with developers. Currently, the list indicates which vendors have successfully posted a digitally signed IPAWS alert in the test environment FEMA’s set up for the open platform for emergency networks (OPEN) IP system. Because the list was initiated before FEMA began using unique digital certificates for Collaborative Operating Groups (COGs), FEMA can’t confirm whether any individual vendor has actually successfully tested the system, said Neil Graves, a technical requirements manager with FEMA’s IPAWS-OPEN.
The post-derecho 911 outages in northern Virginia were “very serious” and bordered on “catastrophic,” the Virginia State Corporation Commission wrote in an interim report Friday (http://xrl.us/bnpspc). The SCC, along with the FCC and other entities, have been investigating the outages since they occurred over a few days starting June 29.