WASHINGTON—In the run-up to its August open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission has released details of its previously announced plans to embark on an effort to “re-examine…national alert and warning systems from the ground up and explore whether fundamental changes to these systems could make them more effective, efficient, and better able to serve the public’s needs.”
At the August meeting, the FCC will vote on whether to proceed with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will begin the effort by seeking public comment on wide variety of topics that could ultimately produce fundamental changes in the workings of current alerting systems.
Notably the proposed NPRM does not mention the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the Trump administration is trying to defund. In the past the CPB has played a major role in channeling funding to public stations to implement and upgrade their alerting systems.
The proposed NPRM also makes no mention of ATSC 3.0 or the transition to NextGenTV/ATSC 3.0. Proponents of 3.0 broadcasts have repeatedly touted its capabilities for delivering much more robust and informative alerts.
The FCC reports that the NPRM, which has been released to the public but won't take effect until it is has been voted on, will consider these main issues:
- "Seeks comment on the objectives that effective alert and warning systems should serve.
- “Explores which entities need to be able to send alerts to fully accomplish these objectives and how these needs should be addressed in the design of alerting systems.
- “Considers the alert transmission capabilities that a national public alert and warning system must have to achieve its objectives, including the need for resilience, geographic targeting and security.
- “Examines both the kinds of information that needs to be conveyed to the public and how that information needs to be conveyed for the nation's alert and warning systems to be effective.
- “Asks whether EAS and WEA are meeting the needs and expectations of both the public and alerting authorities, and if not, whether EAS and WEA need to be redesigned to fully reach their potential for achieving the nation's alerting objectives."
The proposed NPRM notes, “Congress established the Commission for the purposes of, among other things, the national defense and “promoting safety of life and property through the regulation of wire and radio communications networks.
“For nearly 75 years, the Commission has implemented this mandate by adopting rules that set technical and other requirements to provide the public with an effective national public alert and warning system,” the proposed NPRM explained. “The Commission’s approach to emergency alerting has been to implement regulations intended to leverage existing commercial communications infrastructure for public safety purposes and to update that existing capability over time to reflect advances in technology and evolving consumer expectations. While this approach has gradually improved the nation’s alerting capabilities, it may also have restricted innovation by preserving alerting frameworks that are decades old without examining whether more fundamental structural changes are warranted.”
To overcome that issue the proposed NPRM said: “In this Notice, we take a novel approach by seeking first to identify what goals the nation’s alert and warning systems should be designed to serve. Proceeding from these first principles will enable the Commission to explore alternatives to our historical regulatory approach and consider how to maximize the usefulness, effectiveness, and resiliency of EAS and WEA consistent with our legal authority. As part of this examination, we seek to identify the objectives that an effective national alerting system should advance, how alerting systems should be designed to ensure that they serve the needs of alerting authorities, what kinds of information alerting systems should deliver, how that information can be most effectively conveyed to the public, public expectations when receiving that information, and other important considerations necessary for modernizing the nation’s public alert and warning capabilities.”
The proposed NPRM extensively covers questions and issues regarding how alerts are currently delivered, with an eye towards changing that infrastructure to reflect how people use devices and consume media.
As part of that effort, it also raises questions about whether the current system of relying on radio and TV broadcasts and cable systems may be outmoded.
“Today, the public can receive emergency alerts from various sources like mobile devices, radio and television broadcasts, cable services, wireline video services, and road signs,” the proposed NPRM explained. “The public, however, increasingly engages with content through other media and platforms that are not equipped to interrupt content to provide emergency messages, such as personal computers, tablets without commercial mobile service, wearable technology, gaming consoles, smart speakers, streaming services, and social media. This shift in consumer behavior indicates that fewer people may be using the platforms through which emergency messages have been traditionally issued, which may frustrate the EAS and WEA systems’ objectives of widespread public notification about emergencies.
“Are the services that transmit EAS alerts—radio and television broadcast, cable service, wireline video services, and certain satellite services—representative of how people consume video and audio services today?” the proposed NPRM asks. “Does EAS remain an effective tool for alert originators if it only makes alerts available over those services?If the public’s media habits are changing, what changes can the Commission implement to make sure that EAS and WEA continue to follow the public’s eyes and ears…Alternatively, is a new alerting system needed to reach the public on these other media and platforms?”
The full proposed NPRM can be found here.
