Industry Sees No Need for Reporting Rules on Alerts; Others Disagree
The FCC doesn’t need to impose additional reporting requirements on emergency alert system participants to combat false alerts, said NAB, CTIA, NCTA and the American Cable Association in docket 15-94. A few local governments and public TV interests disagreed.
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“Increased regulation of EAS Participants is not a solution to problems better resolved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” NCTA said. The FCC’s new rule requiring participants to inform the agency of a false alert by email within 24 hours is “reasonable” and “sufficient,” NAB said. The FCC should “defer until the new reporting requirement becomes effective and stakeholders can fairly review its performance before considering the adoption of additional, more burdensome reporting obligations,” NAB said.
CTIA advised against imposing new requirements on carriers to report and measure the performance of wireless emergency alerts. It noted that participation in the WEA program is voluntary. “Requiring the Participating … Providers to track delivery or display of WEA messages would be infeasible with the foundational cell-broadcast technology used to meet the public safety mission of WEA, and would undermine the voluntary nature of the WEA program as directed by Congress,” CTIA said. WEA has been a success, the group said. “Participating CMS Providers serving more than 99 percent of wireless subscribers have voluntarily distributed more than 36,000 WEA messages to millions of wireless consumers."
AT&T said there are many reasons alerts sometimes don’t get through, but obtaining accurate performance information is difficult. “Carriers push out the alert to subscriber handsets and do not receive any information back to confirm receipt or indicate failure of delivery, making it difficult to determine what caused a failed delivery to a consumer handset,” AT&T said. “Examining the reason for failure would require AT&T to put the device in debug or logging mode -- modes not currently enabled on consumer devices by device manufacturers -- which, in isolation, makes it impossible for a network provider to identify the causes of any particular failure.”
Since cable carriers aren’t the source of alerts, they shouldn’t be bound by extra rules, NCTA and ACA said. Rules focusing on state reaction to false alerts, public reporting and alert originators -- such as broadcasters -- would work “far more effectively than expedited reporting from EAS Participants who are involved only in passing through false alerts,” ACA said. “This approach would properly impose an increased burden on those EAS Participants, if any, that played some role in a false alert coming into being.” NAB “finds no reason for additional reporting obligations."
Changes to the WEA program are “necessary,” said America’s Public Television Stations, PBS and CPB. The FCC should require commercial mobile service providers to “install, test, and operate” the PBS Warning, Alert and Response Network as backup for disseminating integrated public alert warning system alerts, the filing said. The C-1 interface is a “hardened, redundant pathway” for providing reliable delivery of WEA messages, the public TV groups said. They asked the FCC to pay attention to increasing radio interference and take proactive measures against additional noise: “As more devices produce more incidental signals, the coverage of public safety radio systems, broadcasters, and wireless providers is being reduced, particularly in urban areas.”
The New York City Emergency Management Department called for reporting rules for both broadcasters and carriers. “Significant gaps remain with the reliability of the nation’s alerting system,” the department said. “Recent high-profile false alerts have highlighted the need for enhanced alert originator training and standardized false alert response practices.”
Harris County, Texas, said between the false alert of a missile attack in Hawaii (see 1801300053) and the inconsistent use of alerts during the California wildfires, the public has many questions about WEAs. “It is generally agreed amongst all public safety partners that additional reporting on WEA/EAS systems is needed,” the county said. “Additional information from wireless carriers on message delivery and delivery failures is crucial to identifying what areas are being over and under alerted during an emergency.”