[EAS] Recap of other FCC FNPRM filings so far

[Richard_Rudman]

There have been four other informal comments filed with the FCC and viewable on the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) as of today:

One Ministries, Inc. objected to having to buy a CAP system by the original March 29, 2011 deadline with no CAP feed to monitor until, as they phrase it, "...until September, 2011." They believe "that the FCC should only require broadcasters to purchase CAP equipment within one year of the federal government implementing its infrastructure," They also suggest that since satellite NCE stations do not have internet connectivity, NCE stations only should be required to have CAP connectivity at their main station.

Ralph Brancato is asking that the FCC "RE-INSTATE and do not eliminate the Emergency Action Termination "(EAT)" message from the proposed rules." He says the EAT is needed "as a failsafe and "reset" to protect the integrity, operation and public confidence in the system." He also states that "The Public Internet connection to the IPAWS CAP server should be "PULL" from clients, not "PUSH". Public safety and timeliness of alerts can be assured as clients can connect outbound on local firewalls." Finally, he believes that "An IPAWS emergency backbone should be enabled to assure delivery at times when a denial-ofservice ("DOS") attack is made on the IPAWS server/switch."

Fred Sperry said "that the header-derived TV EAS crawl would still be the standard even after the implementation of CAP. I don't believe that viewers would be confused if one station runs the header-derived crawl but another runs the more complete CAP-derived crawl." He goes on to say -- "The more descriptive crawl is an advantage of CAP that should be implemented as soon as a station is able to do so. Requiring stations to run the header-derived crawl prior to a CAP-derived crawl is likely what will cause viewer confusion."

Expect longer and more detailed filings to appear on the filing deadline date. It is a common practice to not file detailed formally written Comments on until the closing date.

Regards.

Richard Rudman/BWWG