[EAS] Public safety, communications and the FCC versus the telecoms

[Ira Wilner]

I'm posting this link to a communications trade newsletter as I think it 
very relevent to our discussions about EAS signalling and reaching the 
general public during an emergency.  The concept of the telephone company 
being the COLR (carrier of last resort), namely the utility that must be 
provided to all households no matter their location or cost to wire is going 
away.  And with it, the promise of connectivity through better or worse is 
also going away.

EAS and OTA broadcasting will become even more important in the future, not 
less.  If copper turns to fiber and all the eggs will end up in that one 
basket, or carried by the  RF from the nearest single cell tower, you have a 
single point of failure for many folks.  As long as we have several radio 
and TV stations serving every market, we have more redundancy with which to 
reach our population than the wire line or cellular networks in time of 
crisis.

The piece in the link below seems to hedge on whether the means of 
transport, fiber or RF versus copper is the issue or simply getting away 
from the responsibility of the COLR.

Read 4G Kills the Copper Plant.

http://www.lightreading.com/blog.asp?blog_sectionid=244&doc_id=226948&f_src=lrweeklynewsletter