Katrina NPRM May Allow Mandates Not on Panel List
Comments reaching beyond discussions by its blue ribbon panel on Hurricane Katrina are being sought by the FCC. The window opened in a notice of proposed rulemaking asking follow up questions on a report by the Independent Panel Reviewing the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Communications Networks (CD June 20 Special Report). While easy to miss, the sentence involved 8th floor negotiations and could be significant, sources said Tues. The sentence reads:
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“We also seek comment whether we should rely on voluntary consensus recommendations, as advocated by the independent panel, or whether we should rely on other measures for enhancing readiness and promoting more effective response efforts.”
Most panel recommendations could be undertaken by carriers on their own, but the comment invitation implies much bigger things, a source said: “This would open the door for suggestions that the FCC would actually mandate. For example, you have to keep this many generators, you have build your system with this much redundancy. You have build wired and wireless backhaul, that sort of stuff… Sure we want voluntary efforts, so the most important thing is that the job get done.”
Meanwhile, panel chmn. and former NTIA dir. Nancy Victory said Tues. her colleagues are “extremely pleased” the FCC “moved so rapidly and forcefully” to launch a rulemaking asking follow up questions less than a week after they sent their final report. “The report reflects 5 months of hard, collective and cooperative work to identify the problems and solutions facing the communications industry and first responders when an unprecedented disaster strikes,” Victory told us: “The report tries to provide a dispassionate and objective assessment of what happened, what went wrong, what went right and what might be done.”
APCO Pres. Wanda McCarley is particularly pleased with the report’s recommendations for improvements to first responder operable and interoperable communication, she said. “Among other positive recommendations in the panel’s report, we support the recommendation to expeditiously approve broadcaster’s requests to terminate analog service in the 700 MHz band before the end of the digital television transition in 2009 in order to allow public safety users immediate access to this spectrum,” McCarley said.
EAS Problems Singled Out
Broadcast and cable were hurt the most by Katrina among media the panel reviewed, while DBS service was largely unaffected. Emergency alert systems (EAS) were singled out for criticism because of a lack of govt. coordination with media and the need to improve access for the disabled and people who don’t speak English. Industry technicians and engineers are among workers who would get enhanced access to disaster areas under the panel’s proposals, which would speed restoration of communications. Broadcasters would benefit from loosening Commission rules during emergencies. The panel proposed letting nonprofit stations broadcast commercial programming “during a crisis,” among other measures.
The FCC should educate govt. officials about using EAS, which the report said is “not utilized by state and local officials to provide localized emergency evacuation and other important information.” Such outreach efforts are important, the document added, because “the primary source of emergency information about Katrina came through broadcast (including satellite broadcast) and cable.” NCTA, which has said the cable industry is preparing for future hurricanes (CD May 20 p16), declined comment. Broadcasters have spent considerable time discussing emergency preparedness, recently holding a meeting of officials from every state on the subject, an NAB spokesman said: “We're aware of the issue. We think broadcasters are the first line of information during emergency situations.”
Industry hasn’t said how non-English speakers will get information in the next emergency, said Minority Media & Telecom Council Exec. Dir. David Honig. That could pose a problem in the next hurricane because broadcasters haven’t acted on Spanish stations’ proposal to hand off EAS transmissions to a rival if they're knocked off the air, he told us: “We're out of time to get this addressed, hurricane season is already upon us. This is easy to fix.”
Many residents missed emergency warnings because power outages -- not equipment failure -- often made cable and over-the-air TV and radio inaccessible. “The lengthy power outages, which substantially exceeded back- up generator capabilities, prevented many broadcast stations from coming back on the air,” the document stated: “Similar to broadcasting, power outages at the viewer end prevented cable programming from being successfully received.”