Rulemaking on EAS Gear Certification Ready to Circulate Soon, FCC Staffer Says
A rulemaking notice on emergency alert system (EAS) gear certification, in the wake of a new standard from the federal government on protocol for transmitting such warnings, should be ready to circulate by year’s end, a career FCC official working on the draft said Thursday. The notice on applying Part 11 rules to radio and TV station and cable operator gear using the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being wrapped up now, Chief Tom Beers of the Public Safety Bureau’s Policy Division told an FCBA brown bag lunch. Also there, the FEMA official overseeing the integrated public alert and warning system said that agency hopes to have a nationwide EAS test, possibly in the next two years, something an NAB representative in the audience said broadcasters likely would support.
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The Part 11 item “is on a fast track to come out of our shop,” Beers said. “We're targeting later this year” and he’s been looking at a draft version of the rulemaking notice, he said. The rules for testing of and compliance of EAS equipment with CAP is “a very high priority right now for our shop,” Beers said. “We want this machine in motion” and some Part 11 rules need updating for CAP, he continued. It’s not his call when the item will be voted on, but it should be ready to go to the chairman’s office in about a month, Beers said.
Commissioners are voting on a related order that would give cable operators and commercial and nonprofit broadcasters a delay, which they sought, to implement CAP, Beers confirmed. The order from the Public Safety Bureau would extend by another 180 days, to Sept. 30, the deadline for the broadcast and cable industries to be ready for CAP, other agency officials have said (CD Nov 15 p3). “A number of folks had been telling us for some time that 180 days was inadequate,” which was the initial deadline the commission laid out, Beers said. “I expect that that concrete development will take place in the next several days,” he said of the forthcoming order, which Beers declined to be more specific about. Michael Copps is said by agency and industry officials to have been the last FCC member whose vote was needed on the order for it to be approved and then made public. He voted for the order on Thursday, an aide said.
There are 25,000 to 30,000 EAS participants that would need to test and install CAP-compliant gear, and there had been concern manufacturers wouldn’t have equipment ready in enough time to meet the six-month deadline, said Senior Director Kelly Williams of the NAB. “Availability was an issue,” and may still be to some extent, he said on the panel. There’s concern now about the time it would take to ensure new CAP equipment is EAS-compliant, Williams said. Existing rules only say that such gear must be plugged in, he added. “It would be nice to have some rules.” Some state public broadcasting networks also need time to budget for it, because their last budget cycle has passed and they get some of their funding from states, he said. The Association of Public Television Stations, NPR and PBS had joined with the American Cable Association, Association for Maximum Service Television, NAB, NCTA and Society of Broadcast Engineers in seeking a CAP implementation delay.
Wireless companies are moving forward with testing handsets and infrastructure equipment to start, on a voluntary basis, commercial mobile alert service, said Vice President Christopher Guttman-McCabe of the CTIA. “Knock on wood, we will meet” the April 2012 deadline to start the service, which wireless carriers serving 97 percent of U.S. subscribers have agreed to roll out, he said. “I know the carriers are committed to that deadline.” There’s been one trial and another is going on now, Guttman-McCabe said. “We're developing our side of the product; handsets are starting to roll out,” he said: The integrated warning system FEMA is working on “is large, it’s game-changing, and we get that wireless is going to be part of that.”
FEMA is doubling the number of primary entry point stations for EAS alerts to more than 80, which will reach about 74 percent of the U.S. population, said Antwane Johnson, who is leading the agency’s work on the integrated warning system. The agency wants to ensure there’s interoperability of such alerts “to reach as broad a range of citizens as possible,” he said. The primary entry point stations are “fortified” with the ability to shelter staffers and with the ability to generate their own power for two months, he said. “We're kind of retrofitting some of the stations, from the early days.” The integrated alert system can send warnings to radio and TV stations, pay-TV providers, cellular networks, the Internet and roadside signs, Johnson said.
A 180-day delay to implement CAP for broadcasters and cable operators “kind of still fits within our timeline,” Johnson said. “We're certainly sensitive to the fact that you do have manufacturing challenges” and “the last thing you want to see is to have these devices introduced and not perform” as intended, he added. FEMA in about a week’s time will release a list of devices “that kind of have our stamp of approval” for integrated alerts, Johnson said. He said that after January’s test of EAS throughout Alaska, FEMA hopes to have such a test throughout the 48 contiguous states before the presidential administration changes. That will occur in January 2013, or four years later.