FCC reviews EAS, CAP

[Art Botterell <acb@incident.com>]

Friends -

The FCC has released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) 
regarding a "Review of the Emergency Alert System" (EB Docket No. 
04-296).  The Common Alerting Protocol is described in paragraph 33, 
which goes on to say, "We seek comment on whether the CAP could act 
as an effective interface through which an emergency manager could 
access multiple emergency notification services, including EAS."

The text of the NPRM is online at 
<http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2004/FCC-04-189A1.html>.

Anyone that wants to comment on any matter raised in the NPRM can do 
so online or on paper (see paragraphs 49-52 for details.)  Initial 
comments will be due within 60 days from the NPRM's publication in 
the Federal Register (not sure exactly when that was/will be, but the 
release date was August 12th) and reply comments within 90 days.

- Art


PS - A concept paper from last year on how CAP might be used to 
create a new and more secure backbone for EAS, Weather Radio and 
other systems is available online at 
<http://www.incident.com/cap/docs/aps/Advanced_EAS_Concept.pdf>