WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will vote on a proposed Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that takes steps to improve the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) by requiring targeted cybersecurity improvements to protect the system from cybercriminals and our nation’s adversaries.
The Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which has not been adopted or implemented by the agency, also proposes additional ways to improve EAS and WEA to make them more helpful to alerting authorities, less burdensome for participating communications providers, and better able to save lives.
As part of those improvements, the FCC said it will consider whether it should eliminate what the agency calls “outdated and unnecessary alerting requirements by proposing to allow the implementation of EAS capabilities via software instead of hardware and retire the 90-character-maximum versions of WEA messages.”
In the past, the NAB has pressed the FCC to allow software implementations.
Last year, the NAB is requested the Federal Communications Commission make changes to Emergency Alert System (EAS) rules that would allow but not require EAS participants to use software-based EAS encoder/decoder technology instead of a legacy physical hardware device to process EAS messages.
In that April 2025 filing, the NAB urged the FCC fast-track the request because hardware supplier Sage Alerting Systems, one of two hardware suppliers, has recently stopped production of devices and because the “the current legacy ecosystem is not sustainable.”
In 2025, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that launched a reexamination of the nation’s alerting systems to explore ways to make them more effective, efficient, and better able to serve the public’s needs.
The proposed Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) is the result of that inquiry. It aims to preserve the public’s trust in EAS by requiring targeted cybersecurity improvements that will help protect against hijacking by cybercriminals and foreign governments.
More specifically, the FCC described the changes as follows:
- Improve EAS’s integrity by proposing to require the authentication of all alerts before they are transmitted.
- Bolster the reliability of emergency alerts by proposing to establish a universal alert identification number to improve the detection and blocking of duplicate alerts and ensure that WEAs are consistently sent to members of the public who newly enter an alert’s delivery area until the emergency ends.
- Improve geographic accuracy by proposing to eliminate outdated WEA geotargeting exceptions that often cause alerts to be received in the wrong locations and expand geotargeting options for EAS.
- Make alerts more effective by seeking comment on requiring EAS and WEA to display symbols that match the type of emergency and improving the ability of earthquake alerts to grab the public’s attention.
- Remove outdated and unnecessary alerting requirements by proposing to allow the implementation of EAS capabilities via software instead of hardware and retire the 90-character-maximum versions of WEA messages.
The proposed Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released on June 4 2026 is not a final, adopted action. It has been circulated for tentative consideration by the Commission at its Open Meeting on June 25. The issues referenced and the Commission's ultimate resolution of those issues are subject to change, the agency stressed.
The full document is available here.
