[EAS] USVI and PR: polygons versus political boundaries

[Sean Donelan]

On Sat, 9 Sep 2017, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES wrote:
> Can't say I've heard of "U-Verse alerting" before.  As for the 
> "industry functional requirement statements"... I'll confess I don't 
> recall you from either CMSAAC or ATIS.  But that's not important.

Naw, I worked with the corporate lobbyists on the opt-out language 
that ended up in the Warning, Alert and Response Network Act.  This was 
before the CMSAAC or ATIS working groups. Ensuring the new alerting system 
was optional for wireless carriers and consumers could choose to opt-out 
was in the list of corporate functional requirements the team came up.

While I wasn't the first one to suggest a consumer opt-out, I kept 
reminding the corporate lobbyists to ensure the consumer opt-out stayed in 
the legislative language. The corporate lobbyists then worked with
Sen. DeMint and Sen. Stevens staffers on the final language. The language 
was copied in the House bill, and eventually passed as part of the final 
WARN Act.

The CMSAAC and ATIS standards work happened after those early decisions.
I changed jobs when that activity was happening (and there was corporate 
merger), so a different person worked on those advisory committees.

The internal joke was the real job of the corporate representative on 
an advisory group is making sure the advisory group never bothers the 
people doing actual work inside the corporation.  I had to get 
debriefed by the corporate government liason team everytime I came to 
Washington, D.C. about what I could or couldn't say.