Having recently released a report concerning the rules for the national Emergency Alert System, the Federal Communications Commission issued a reminder to participants of its June 30 deadline for the implementation of Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) alert requirements.

The Fifth Report and Order consists of 130 pages of clarifications and streamlining of the FCC’s (News - Alert) Part 11 rules, and it identifies how Emergency Alert System (EAS) participants must be able to receive alerts messages formatted in the CAP by June 30 of this year. These participants include:

·         Radio broadcast stations

·         Television broadcast stations

·         Cable systems

·         Wireline video systems

·         Wireless cable systems

·         Direct broadcast satellite service providers

·         Satellite digital audio radio service providers

The compliance deadline of June 30 will ensure that the above providers are enabled to receive such emergency messages through one standard protocol.

The CAP standard, as applied across all of those providers, will allow for “more robust messaging including audio and video alerts” according to announcements. As an IP-based system, CAP provides links to other sources of information regarding emergencies as opposed to the current method of simply providing text-based alert codes.

The June deadline has already been extended twice over the last several years by the FCC since its initial requirement for the CAP-formatted messages in 2007. The government organization ran into obstacles in the adoption of certain rules and identifying equipment obligations, say the reports. Many nation-wide broadcasters and service providers have already adopted the CAP messaging formats, and those who do not meet the requirements by June 30 will face scrutiny from the FCC.

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.

Edited by Tammy Wolf