The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national warning system that is used throughout the country to alert the public of major events such as tornadoes, flash floods, fires, and any other announcement deemed important enough for an announcement.

The EAS system is designed to display messages on cable television systems, wireless cable systems, satellite digital audio radio service, direct broadcast satellite providers, radios, and now even text messages (if a user decides to opt-in). The Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said the EAS gets implemented at the federal level. “The President has sole responsibility for determining when the EAS will be activated at the national level, and has delegated this authority to the director of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency),” said FEMA.

Trilithic Inc., has developed and demonstrating a brand-new next generation version of the EAS system for CAP IPAWS compliance at the NABShow in April. The company’s new system has new technological enhancements such as alert messages, local messages for franchise agreements, control over the network, and secure Web servers – all on a brand new platform. However the main thing Trilithic has been able to accomplish is developing this new solution that can expand on operators who already have the EASy series system requirements, preventing the need for a new system to be built from scratch.

Last year, companies were told that they would need to comply with the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) guidelines that are supposed to be integrated into all EAS services by June 2012 according to the FCC (News - Alert). The new guidelines require a new open-standard CML-based format for EAS messages. The deadline to comply has been delayed twice in the past already due to smaller areas needing more time to integrate the new program.

However, integrating didn’t seem to be a problem for Trilithic. The company received 4.5 out of a possible 5 stars for it’s new EASyCAP program.

One judge said, “Trilithic has stepped up to CAP requirements providing ways to deal with classic EAS gear and handle the newest digital architectures deployed in the field. EASyCAP allows compliance with recent CAP rules while providing an integrated and scalable solution to complex legacy systems in place now,” the judge continued saying, “Abundant interfaces are addressed and provide flexibility in handling what is likely to be deployed for mobile and IPTV (News - Alert) situations in the near future.”