[EAS] EAS Update at the NAB

[Richard Rudman]

Mike/Everyone:

All the devices I am familiar with can be updated over the same IP connection that they have to have to be compliant.

At the two remote sites I am responsible where EAS devices are installed we have a PC also installed running LogMeIn so I can control and monitor not only the EAS box, but other site issues as well. This is done as a supplement to the existing remote control web client.

That said, there are costs to install a PC and good router at such locations, but so far my clients think its worth it in the long run -- not only for EAS but for other remote site support.

As far as your three points:

1.  Having a unified 12-24 month roadmap from the federal partners would be a real help. That issue has and will be raised. Stay tuned here for more on this.

2. FEMA is not a regulatory agency and therefore does not issue Reports and Orders as does the FCC. there is the added challenge with FEMA because it composed of separate Directorates responsible for different parts of what we perceive as the same mission. Your point goes to the fact that the U.S. still does not have a document we can point to that describes its overall warning strategy. IPAWS is a means to achieve that strategy, but it is not the strategy itself. We pointed the lack of an overall U.S. warning strategy in several Partnership For Public Warning reports to the FCC, FEMA and NOAA.

3. The labor costs for EAS box updates and tweaks either takes away from the work day for employee engineers, or become direct costs when a contract engineer has to do them. All part of what is still the unfunded mandate of EAS compliance. Could go higher than $100 per change...

Richard Rudman
The BWWG

On Apr 17, 2012, at 9:34 AM, Mike McCarthy wrote:

let them know how frustrated we are for needing to repeatedly venture high and low, from mountain top sites to tropical
islands to repeatedly update our boxes when one or the other comes out with something critical.

> 1) MAKE UP THEIR MINDS ON EVERYTHING. Deliver a s unified, single, 
> comprehensive, and complete set of rules and regulations designed to
> permit some level of stability beyond 12 months.
> 
> 2) Tell both the FCC and FEMA to unify their reports and orders so as to
> eliminate so many necessary differing and closely spaced iterative OS
> updates to the equipment disbursed at those far and wide locations.
> 
> 3) It costs a station on average $100 or per box to update including