[EAS] Should the RWT EAS Code be abolished?

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011, Richard Rudman wrote:
> Should the FCC do away with the RWT as the BWWG suggested, or does the 
> RWT have some value that we overlooked?

First, figure out how the national (state, local) plan should work.

Second, and only after the first thing, change the protocol to match the 
plan.

The last link of the EAS chain (and previously EBS, CONELRAD) is not
the broadcaster, but the general public. Historically, the EAS, EBS, etc 
plans have attempted to support, but not require, decoders in receivers 
used by the general public capable of notifying the public both when they
are watching or listening and when radio or television was turned "off." 
In practice, decoders, SAME or previous tone-only, have been rare in 
general-purpose consumer receivers except for weather radios.

The National Weather Service uses the RWT function not just for testing 
their transmission equipment, but also as a "keep alive" function for 
consumer weather radios.  A NWS station can generate a RWT itself if 
they haven't transmitted a RMT or other alert previously during the 
keepalive timeout period. If a consumer weather radio hasn't heard any 
alerts (RWT or any other event) after 10 days, it generates an error for 
the consumer to check the equipment and reception. Besides the rare 
consumer receiver with a decoder, RWT can also help other automated 
monitoring by emergency agencies checking the over-the-air alert 
readiness of all broadcasters in their area without more frequent 
intrusive tests, and not just what a station's encoder/decoder log says. 
I don't know of any emergency management agencies checking the 
over-the-air performance, except maybe on an ad-hoc basis.

RWT may or may not add value.  Its purpose in the national EAS plan may 
have changed over the years, and the national EAS plan needs to be 
updated.  If the national EAS plan is updated, then the EAS 
transmission protocol may also need updating.