The storm known as Isaac evolved into a category-1 hurricane early Wednesday and continued its assault. States of emergency were declared in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. But by 3 p.m. EDT the storm weakened back into a tropical storm, but still with “life-threatening hazards,” the National Hurricane Center said. Isaac has left many power outages in its wake and plenty of communications frenzy, but little clear picture of how telecom has been affected.
Daystar Radio sought an FCC waiver because KLLV(AM), Breen, Colo., doesn’t have access to broadband to allow it can get and pass along emergency alert system warnings in common alerting protocol format, the broadcaster said. “The high speed DSL line is still unavailable in our area,” which is rural, the station said in a filing posted Thursday to docket 04-296 (http://xrl.us/bnmxho). “There is no satellite delivery at the station -- program content is downloaded 20 miles away at our business office and CDs are hand delivered to the station."
GAO is reviewing “progress made in modernizing” the U.S. emergency alert system and last year’s nationwide EAS test, the FCC said (http://xrl.us/bnmjjz). The office is reviewing “efforts underway to address any weaknesses in the EAS identified by the test,” said a Public Safety Bureau public notice dated Friday. “GAO has requested test result information” from the commission, and the FCC is sharing with the office information from EAS participants about the test, the notice said. It said radio and TV stations, pay-TV operators and others that participate in EAS were ordered in November to give test information to the commission, which an FCC order “specifically provided that submitted information would be presumed confidential and not released to the public."
Emergency managers need to make sure they involve people with disabilities when making emergency plans, said Marcie Roth, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Disability Integration and Coordination. Alerts should be as accessible as possible, she said Wednesday on a FEMA webinar about the Integrated Public Alert and Warnings System. As an example, she highlighted a demonstration from the county of San Diego that used audio, text and American Sign Language messages in the same clip (http://youtu.be/hoxcc0PFcq0). Getting people with disabilities involved in emergency planning is critical because they have expertise and experience using communications systems that will be critical during emergencies, she said. “We've historically thought about people with disabilities as perhaps liabilities in emergencies and disasters,” she said. “But people with disabilities encounter some of the challenges with accessibility and access to effective communication on a daily basis and can be some of our greatest assets as we plan our work.” Roth said the National Council on Disability is preparing a report for later this year or early next year that will lay out the current state of disaster communications accessibility and provide some recommendations.
Several Virginia 911 directors met with Verizon officials Wednesday for a long closed-door meeting at the Alexandria Police Facility in northern Virginia. They discussed Verizon’s 911 failures during the June 29 derecho storm and reviewed a Verizon report on the outages at four 911 centers in northern Virginia as a result of two busted generators (CD Aug 15 p1). The telco remained contrite about the failure as the 911 directors emphasized the depth of the problem, participants told us just outside of the gathering and during interviews Tuesday.
The June 29 “derecho” storm cut off 911 calls to four Mid-Atlantic public safety answering points and did more damage as a whole than Hurricane Irene, said a report by Verizon. It’s set for delivery at a closed-door meeting of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Wednesday. With the FCC poised to look again at whether it should impose backup power rules, Verizon went out of its way to clarify that its backup power facilities worked with only two exceptions, even though the carrier lost power at 100 locations. The derecho-related problems are the subject of an ongoing FCC investigation. The council first voted to investigate July 11 and said “the elected leadership of our region expects far better than this” (http://xrl.us/bnkpi8).
CEA President Gary Shapiro reacted negatively Friday to reports that Senate staffers plan to meet with broadcasters Sept. 14 to discuss putting radio chips in mobile devices (CD Aug 10 p14). NAB has claimed it doesn’t want a mandate for device makers and carriers to include FM tuners, Shapiro said in a written statement. “But the fact that broadcasters keep lobbying Congress is telling,” he said. Trade publications recently quoted Emmis Communications CEO Jeff Smulyan as saying he thinks that putting FM chips in mobile devices will boost radio listenership by 30 percent, Shapiro said. “So, if this FM chip business is about raising stock prices and not about public safety, then we encourage broadcasters to create demand and make deals with carriers to include FM chipsets,” Shapiro said. Of the Sept. 14 meeting, NAB thinks “it’s encouraging that policymakers are beginning to better understand the public safety value of having activated radio chips in cellphones,” spokesman Dennis Wharton told us in a statement. “We understand that from a business perspective, wireless carriers prefer selling a streaming service rather than voluntarily lighting up free radio chips already installed in the phones. We're hopeful the carriers will ultimately conclude that public safety trumps profits, and that denying mobile phone customers a lifeline radio option in an emergency situation represents an untenable longterm strategy.” To “be clear,” Wharton said, broadcasters are “not seeking a mandate” on FM chips in mobile phones. “Activated radio chips are standard features in mobile phones all over the world, except the U.S.,” he said. “The reason this is important” from a public safety perspective “is that cellphone networks crash in times of emergency,” he said. “Radio uses a different transmission architecture and would still work in a crisis situation.” CTIA thinks that any solution to what broadcasters seek “must be driven by consumer preference,” Jot Carpenter, vice president-government affairs, told us in an email Friday. “To the extent that consumers don’t choose the multitude of FM-capable devices that are already available, then I would recommend the FM radio stations look to see how they can better compete with the on-demand and customizable apps such as Pandora, Spotify and TuneIn,” he said. “As far as the Wireless Emergency Alerts, it’s important to remember that CTIA, FEMA, FCC, NOAA, The Weather Channel, Texas Association of Broadcasters, Florida Association of Broadcasters, Michigan Association of Broadcasters and the Association of Public TV Stations -- for a total of 42 entities -- were a part of the decision making process when WEA was created.” NAB said that the emergency alert system and wireless emergency alerts “can co-exist as complementary components of a National Alert System as envisioned by the President.'”
Senate staffers plan to meet with broadcasters to discuss cellphone radio chips, a spokeswoman for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed Thursday. The discussion is scheduled for Sept. 14, the spokeswoman said, without confirming the participants, timing or location. Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is interested in FM radio chips because it is an “emergency issue,” said Emmis Communications Founder Jeff Smulyan, who told us he was invited to the briefing. “It is impossible to alert the public in any other way than radio in a real emergency,” he said. “Carriers will tell you that they send a 90-character text and that solves it. But we know that: A) 90 characters is not enough information in any emergency; and B) when the power grid goes down the cell systems are out and even when the cell system stays up it jams,” Smulyan said. “They make arguments that don’t pass the smirk test. … The level of obfuscation is truly legendary,” he said. “It is confusing because the phone guys have made it confusing. They have done a nice job of confusing the public that if you listen to [Washington, D.C., news station] WTOP, for example, via streaming that is the same thing as getting it over the air. Consumers haven’t noticed that yet because they have all had unlimited data plans. But as data plans are no longer unlimited then the reality is that they are paying for this,” he said. Smulyan said he won’t seek to ask lawmakers for any industry mandates. “We want to have a serious negotiation with the phone industry. We don’t think that’s unreasonable.” Smulyan said there are “some discussions taking place” between carriers and broadcasters, refusing to elaborate. Last month, FCC staffers and executives from the top four U.S. carriers, some makers of consumer electronics and a broadcast CEO and their trade groups met in an FCC-convened meeting (CD July 27 p4). The discussions brought stakeholders no closer to an agreement on whether more mobile devices should include FM chips to receive terrestrial radio transmissions, the participants said afterward. NAB, CEA and CTIA did not comment.
The National Weather Service is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get more emergency coordinators authorized to use its non-weather emergency message (NWEM) system, said Chief Michael Szkil of NWS’s Climate, Water and Weather Services awareness branch. Such alerts, about emergencies such as earthquakes, avalanches and volcanic eruptions, would then be passed on to the NWS radio and wire services, he said on a FEMA webinar Wednesday. The service’s HazCollect system is another way to distribute emergency alerts through the integrated public alert and warning system, in addition to the emergency alert system and the commercial mobile alert system.
A third company is involved in a retransmission consent dispute between Hearst Television and Time Warner Cable that went into its fourth full day Friday (CD July 13 p2). Nexstar, owner of three TV stations that Time Warner Cable is importing network programming from in five areas, filed a complaint at the FCC against the operator over the practice. Time Warner Cable said it’s within its rights to import the signals of Nexstar stations from other markets that have the same affiliation as Hearst stations blacked out on TWC’s systems.