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From:Thursday, December 15, 2011 10:49 AM -0900
Subject:[eas] EAS National Test news 
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Paul Jewusiak, CE
 



From: Bookey, Dennis
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 10:31 AM
To: Jewusiak, Paul; 'Fisher, Bryan J (MVA)'
Subject: From Today's trades


FEMA says another national EAS test is likely — and Congress wants it to be longer. All the field reports aren’t yet in from broadcasters, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency is already pretty certain of one conclusion. It will need another national test of the Emergency Alert System. “When exactly I’m not sure,” FEMA assistant administrator Damon Penn testified before a House hearing yesterday in Washington. He said a lot would depend on the information collected by the FCC from broadcasters — data not due until December 27. Penn said FEMA and the FCC will first make sure they correct any known problems before embarking on a new dry run. “There may be a call to do some localized testing,” Penn said. “But we really won’t know the timing of that until we get the full information assembled and analyzed and make sure we solve the correct problem.” Regular national EAS testing is also likely, according to regulators. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-CA)
says she’s concerned a :30-second activation wasn’t a “real test” and doubts it could determine much of anything. “This isn’t what we meant when we said the system should be tested,” she said. Penn explained the decision was made to shorten the test since there was fear the public might have been freaked out by a three-minute activation. He acknowledged that meant giving up testing whether the message would have remained on the air past an automatic two-minute shutoff and how stable the EAS would be once it was on the air across the country. “Those are two objectives for future tests,” Penn said. FCC Homeland Security chief Jamie Barnett said the agency’s main objective focused on the connectivity and whether a test originated at FEMA and distributed to primary EAS stations and then cascaded down the daisy chain would get a national test on the air. “We do know the test was transmitted and received to a large majority of the nation,” Barnett said. “We knew that there might be some glitches and that’s exactly what we wanted to concentrate on.” Penn said they’ve already taken steps to ensure the poor audio quality that plagued last month’s test has been corrected. “If we had to initiate it right now, I think the audio would be much better,” he offered.

FEMA wants nine of ten Americans to hear a PEP station. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s multi-million dollar upgrade to the Emergency Alert System is having plenty of impact on radio. One way is to grow the number of PEP stations — the Primary Entry Point or “PEP” for emergency officials and the President during a national crisis. FEMA assistant administrator Damon Penn told Congress yesterday its final plan is to have 77 PEP stations by the end of 2012. That will cover 90% of the U.S. population. That’s up from 84% coverage today. As Inside Radio first reported last January, FEMA is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to add larger fuel tanks to keep generators humming, to build more weather-resistant transmitter buildings and to upgrade electrical systems. “Stations will have the ability to operate under extreme conditions and possess backup equipment and power,” Penn testified. “Legacy stations will be retrofitted to meet the current PEP Station resiliency standards.” Several million dollars will be spent on the project, launched in 2006 by President Bush.

Shock EAS alert causes alarm. “Take shelter now,” was the civil emergency alert sent to thousands of Verizon Wireless customers on their mobile devices Tuesday. Verizon says the alert sent to a three-county region mistakenly wasn’t identified as a test. Police switchboards saw call volumes jump four-fold during the snafu. Cell phone providers are getting ready for a test scheduled tomorrow in the New York market that would assess how the wireless carriers’ text message-based emergency alert system performs. FEMA assistant administrator Damon Penn says Verizon accidentally put an internal test out on its network. “The carrier crossed the testing environment with the production and output, and that’s what caused the message to be released,” Penn testified during an EAS hearing yesterday in Washington. CTIA-The Wireless Association VP Chris Guttman-McCabe told Congress during a hearing on EAS yesterday it’s evidence of carriers “working tirelessly” to get ready to deliver the mobile phone service by the April deadline. CTIA has argued it’s one reason FM chips aren’t needed on cell phones