Industry participants are asking the FCC to revisit a couple of items in its recent order (CD Jan 12 p8) implementing a newer emergency alert service format that was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some EAS players told us they want the commission to rethink its decision to prohibit the use of text-to-speech and to consider the burden the rule would place on the smallest cable operators. The Common Alerting Protocol is transmitted via the Internet, and the FCC’s rules address the equipment aspects of CAP.
Small cable operators will be hurt by new FCC rules on emergency alert system equipment that require pay-TV providers and others to get and pass onto viewers a new warning format, the American Cable Association said. The ACA said it and the NCTA had asked the commission to exempt cable systems lacking a physical Internet connection at their headends. The agency instead said in an order Wednesday (CD Jan 12 p8) on Part 11 EAS rules for Common Alerting Protocol that alert participants not served by broadband can seek waivers. CAP uses the Internet to send messages from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which developed the standard a few years ago. “Adding to the burden was the FCC’s decision to consider waivers only on a case-by-case basis while suggesting that any waivers granted will be limited to a maximum of six months,” ACA President Matt Polka said Thursday. “Because the FCC did not adopt or even consider a streamlined waiver process, ACA members will have to absorb the added expense of retaining counsel to draft waivers and track their progress within the agency after they have been submitted.” Some cable systems may shut down “prematurely” because of the new rules, Polka said (http://xrl.us/bmoiu9). He asked the commission to “promptly” reconsider the decision. The ACA is considering whether to file a petition for reconsideration, an association spokesman said. A spokeswoman for the Public Safety Bureau, which drafted the order, declined to comment.
Emergency alert system warnings should be delivered “immediately by all possible means, without political or economic considerations” that could come with involvement by governors in some aspects of EAS, a group of broadcast alert experts told the FCC. The Broadcast Warning Working Group opposed governor must-carry, in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 04-296 (http://xrl.us/bmofmm). A commission order Wednesday on the next technology for broadcasters, pay-TV providers and others to distribute warning messages said such alerts don’t need to be distributed by EAS participants when they're initiated by governors. (See story in this issue.) “Properly crafted, vetted, and issued timely local, state and regional life safety warnings should be ‘must carry’ without involving any vestige of politics to get in the way,” the broadcast group said of opposing governor must-carry rules. “We must find a way to issue mandatory warnings with absolutely no political strings attached. We think that this agreement could and should be achieved by getting all warning stakeholders together to work on this issue, not by implementing a ‘governor mandatory’ solution."
The FCC won’t require emergency alert service participants without broadband access to get and pass onto viewers and listeners EAS alerts in a new format that’s been developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A commission order released Wednesday set rules for broadcast radio and TV, satellite radio and DBS, and cable and telco-TV equipment to be certified as complying with the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).
The Department of Homeland Security faces a “very tough” challenge to do all the necessary groundwork to meet an April deadline for the launch of a federal Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) allowing wireless carriers to send warning messages to their subscribers, said Denis Gusty of the Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate during a webinar Wednesday sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act enacted in 2006 mandated the launch of the warning network by that date.
A test of a prototype Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system is on tap Thursday in New York City between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. The city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) plans to send text messages to six different areas of the city that will show as a “Severe Alert” or “Extreme Alert” on a user’s device, OEM said. If they open the message, users will see a message that says, “This is a test from NYC Office of Emergency Mgmt. Test Message 1. This is only a test.” Some users may get multiple alerts. The test is part of the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) unveiled by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and FEMA officials in May (CD May 11 p6). Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are participating in the test. An early version of the system is slated to launch Jan. 1 in New York City.
The FCC should learn from the problems of the DTV transition and set a “date certain” for the end of the public switched telephone network regime, Consumer Federation of America Research Director Marc Cooper said Wednesday. “The big mistake [with DTV] was we let the holdouts set the date and set the time,” Cooper said in a series of panel discussions at the FCC. “There are people who will be reluctant, there will people who will need protection during the transition, but they shouldn’t be allowed to set the date. That date is a drop-dead date. That’s what we need in this space."
Wireless carriers participating in the wireless emergency alerting system shouldn’t be subject to any new requirements as a result of pending Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) legislation, Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA, told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Emergency Management in prepared testimony. The subcommittee held a hearing Tuesday on the effectiveness of the U.S. public alert system. “While IPAWS may help modernize the distribution of alerts on other communications platforms, CMAS [Commercial Mobile Alert Service] is the proper path to deliver and modernize emergency alerts provided over wireless networks,” he said. “We hope you will keep this in mind as you consider legislative efforts” to update the alert system, he said. Mobile DTV broadcasts will be a good way to reach mobile devices with emergency alerts, said Suzanne Goucher, president of the Maine Association of Broadcasters according to a copy of her remarks. “Unlike the still nascent CMAS, which provides only short text messages via cell phones, a mobile DTV EAS system would provide a far more comprehensive and informative experience,” she said. Her recommendation for the pending IPAWS bill, HR-2049, was to eliminate the sunset provision associated with the IPAWS advisory committee it would establish. Making the committee permanent and requiring it to meet on a regular basis would “ensure that the lines of communication remain open and ideas for continuous improvement to the system have a forum in which they can be heard. Meanwhile, as the committee considers IPAWS legislation, it should keep in mind the costs and potential delays associated with changing plans that are currently being implemented, said Bill Check, senior vice president of science and technology for the NCTA. “Any common alerting and warning protocols, standards technology and operating procedures that FEMA would be required to adopt pursuant to new legislation should recognize and incorporate the work that has already been done and should be consistent with existing regulatory directives which have driven our efforts over the past several years,” he said. New legislation should also recognize that distributors aren’t capable of translating alerts into multiple languages, he said. “Legislation should make clear that the obligation to make messages accessible should rest with the message originator,” he said.
Verizon customers in three counties in New Jersey received a CMAS (commercial mobile alert system) alert Monday from the carrier warning of a “civil emergency” and telling people to “take shelter now.” Verizon later apologized and said the alert was meant to be a test though it wasn’t labeled as such. The alert triggered the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness to issue a tweet stating there’s no emergency. The counties are Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean, all of which reported increased volume of 911 calls on Monday.
A thousand-plus telecom attorneys were treated to the comedic stylings of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Thursday night at the FCBA’s annual Chairman’s Dinner. Genachowski’s routine centered on three set pieces: A montage of clips from Saturday Night Live, standup comedian Louis C.K., “SouthPark” and “Anchorman” to make fun of the emergency alert system; a parody of Herman Cain’s now-infamous “smoking” ad featuring a falsely mustachioed FCC Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus declaiming how “f--- up” the Universal Service Fund was; and an extended bit where Genachowski was stymied by Apple’s voice assistant app, Siri. Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein was compared to Charlie Sheen, and Genachowski’s senior counselor Josh Gottheimer was compared to Washington Nationals’ mascot Screech the Eagle. Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn and Harold Feld were compared to Statler and Waldorf, the crotchety hecklers from The Muppet Show, and LightSquared was told it would have to vacate a higher table and that its remaining lower table was “still too loud.” There were at least three AT&T jokes, all from Siri, who told Genachowski that Justice Department antitrust lawyer “Christine Varney’s not the only woman who does your dirty work,” but that Genachowski was chicken for not making a direct AT&T/T-Mobile joke. When Genachowski responded, “Siri, you know I can’t talk about that,” Siri said: “That’s not what [AT&T CEO] Randall Stephenson’s phone records say."