[EAS] Multilingual support for CAP messages

[Ed Czarnecki]

I'll concede many of Rod's points here - and add the fact that the wireless
industry (via the WARN act) received civil immunity for all officers,
directors, employees, contractors, etc...  A nice side benefit that the
broadcast and cable industry does not enjoy any similar protections. 

The WARN act that essentially created CMAS (later WEA) was originally
legislation about a specific digital television initiative.  This
legislation was re-written very rapidly at the 11th hour in committee to
repurpose it to cover commercial mobile service providers, rather than
broadcasters.

However, I don't think that mobile providers have the capability in place
today to support multiple language WEA alerts.  The WEA message format (the
ATIS standard) apparently does not support it.  WEA handset apps do not yet
support it.  Adding multilingual support to WEA would not be trivial.  I
think it should be done in some form, no question, but it is not supported
today, and would probably require some re-engineering of WEA - from the
origination, to the relay, to the app on the mobile device.

And, at the end of the day, WEA would likely just point back at
broadcast/cable media to say "get more information here..."

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Rod Zeigler

Sean,
The wireless industry is not required to carry alerts. None, zero, zip,
nada. Their lobby made this a condition of carrying any alerts.
They only do it as a "Public Service" to their customers IF they (the
wireless company) so desire, and the pushback from that industry on