Emergency Alert Systems Order Expected to Get Pushed Into the Fall
An FCC order on Emergency Alert Systems (EAS) may be off the table for the summer after President Bush signed an executive order last week instructing the Dept. of Homeland Security to submit a plan for reorganizing EAS to the White House within 90 days. Meanwhile, telecom and satellite interests continue outreach at the FCC on EAS, based on ex parte filings made at the Commission in recent days.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
“I've heard it’s totally off the schedule and the reason for that is the executive order,” said one regulatory attorney. “From what I hear the Commission pretty much has no choice but to put the item on hold.”
But other sources said what the FCC will do next remains unclear. A 2nd attorney said that while the FCC won’t act in July, whether it will take action on an EAS order this summer is less clear. The source observed that the order also instructs the FCC to “adopt rules” that ensure “communications systems have the capacity to transmit alerts and warnings to the public as part of the public alert and warning system.”
“There could be 2 interpretations,” the source said. “One is that the FCC should wait until DHS comes up with its plan in 90 days in order to find out what it is supposed to implement.” The source added: “But there could be another interpretation -- that the White House is well aware of the proceeding, that the FCC has sole authority over the airwaves used by the public and nothing should hold the FCC back from just making decisions generally.”
A 3rd source said wireless carriers have been lobbying at the FCC because of fears they won’t like the mandates in the order under construction at the FCC. “The chairman is very committed to moving it forward and the staff is seen as hellbent on getting this done regardless of whether it’s technically feasible,” the source said: “[Carriers are] very concerned and they are fearful with good reason that the staff is going to go beyond anything the industry is prepared to do.”
The White House order instructs DHS to “inventory, evaluate, and assess the capabilities and integration with the public alert and warning system of federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local public alert and warning resources” and to “establish or adopt, as appropriate, common alerting and warning protocols, standards, terminology, and operating procedures.” DHS Secy. Michael Chertoff is supposed to submit a plan to the White House within 90 days detailing how the agency is implementing the order.
Among the groups at the FCC last week, T-Mobile advised the FCC to act cautiously: “T-Mobile believes government, carriers, and vendors can establish a near-term wireless EAS solution based on SMS technology, and set attainable deployment dates for a point-to-multipoint, ‘broadcast-like’ solution that provides for the functionalities the government will want for EAS.” Verizon Wireless said the Commission should adopt a “short term SMS-based solution for wireless EAS patterned after the existing Amber Alert Service.”
Satellite at the FCC
Satellite officials we spoke with said the Commission’s take on EAS remains a mystery. DBS firms have been lobbying at the International Bureau against state and local satellite alerts, contemplated in the EAS FNPRM. EchoStar and DirecTV made the rounds at the Bureau last week, discussing the difficulties of transmitting state and local emergency alerts over national satellite platforms.
DirecTV debriefed Bureau officials on problems with “force-tuning subscriber set-top boxes on state and local levels,” but mentioned the possibility of “an on-screen text message format accompanied by an alert tone,” an ex parte filing said. EchoStar Deputy Gen. Counsel Stanton Dodge phoned Bureau officials to “explain the limitations of direct broadcast satellite systems,” and to restate EchoStar’s commitment to work with the FCC on emergency alerts, a Dish Network ex parte said.
PanAmSat and SES Americom took to the 8th floor to rehash their petition for partial reconsideration of the Nov. EAS order. The FSS operators want to see EAS obligations imposed directly on their DTH video customers, rather than themselves. The FSS operators argue that programming distributors are in the best position to distribute EAS messages, and that placing EAS obligations on DTH providers, like customers EchoStar and DirecTV Latin America, would be “the most logical approach.”