This is the last in our four-part series about the Federal Communications Commission further notice of proposed rulemaking (FNPRM), intended to improve the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts. The commission is taking public comments on its proposals through the end of the month.
The first three parts in our series deal with proposals of direct relevance to radio broadcasters (read them from the start.)
Below is a sampling of additional topics in the FCC notice.
Preventing Duplicate Alerts Through a Universal Identifier
Originators of alerts say the public expects that it won’t receive duplicate warnings. The FCC believes EAS and WEA should be designed to better suppress them.
The text delves into why duplicates happen. The FCC pointed as an example to alerts during the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires that caused confusion and complaints.
The commission proposes that mobile carriers participating in WEA be required to identify whether an alert is a duplicate by using a common message identifier, or “universal alert message ID,” assigned to each WEA message they receive and transmit.
It asks for comment on how this would work and whether the use of a FEMA-IPAWS identification number would help enable other lifesaving developments in the alerting ecosystem.
It also wants to know whether a universal alert message ID could be implemented in EAS, noting that there are scenarios where duplicates can occur, including when location codes in legacy EAS alerts and EAS CAP messages don’t match.
Ensuring the Consistent Transmission of WEA Messages
The FCC wants to know if it should require mobile companies to rebroadcast WEA messages at least once every 60 seconds throughout an alert’s active period.
It said it is concerned that “inconsistent WEA transmission practices threaten the timely delivery of WEA messages and WEA’s resiliency.”
For instance it said that one provider sends a WEA message every minute for the duration of the active period, while others only broadcast each message a single time, and still others broadcast each WEA message a limited number of times after a delay of several minutes.
Strengthening WEA Geotargeting by Eliminating Outdated Exceptions
When alerts “overshoot” a target area, they can generate complaints and create alert fatigue. The FCC wants to eliminate certain exceptions to its WEA geotargeting requirements. Those exceptions allow an overshoot beyond the normal limit of a tenth of a mile in some circumstances.
For example there are exceptions for devices with location services disabled.
“As currently implemented, disabling location services on a WEA-capable mobile device will prevent the device from conducting a geofence and will therefore cause it to present every WEA it receives to the subscriber, even if the device is located far outside of the target area,” the FCC wrote.
In localized testing the FCC found that a very high number of geofencing-capable devices failed to suppress an alert, at least some of them because the location services had been disabled.
The FCC believes that a phone’s location services should be forced on when the device receives a WEA, as with 911 calls, to determine whether an alert is applicable. It wants input on its view, and it asks questions related to user concerns over privacy and tracking.
Also, the FCC proposes to require WEA messages that geotarget alerts by using FIPS codes, or “geocodes,” to achieve the same accuracy as alerts sent using a polygon or circle.
At present, if an alerting authority targets an alert using a FIPS code instead of a polygon or circle, the rules do not require the alert to comply with the 0.1 mile limit on overshoot. So any mobile device that receives the WEA message will present the alert even if the device is far outside the target area.
Promoting the Use of Symbols for Alerts
Should the FCC require EAS and WEA messages to display standardized symbology that identifies the threat type?
It thinks doing so could improve comprehension for people with disabilities and people with limited English reading proficiency.
It also could hasten public reactions to alerts and reduce “milling” — what we people do when we’re unsure if a threat is serious enough to take action.
State broadcast associations have told the FCC that the broadcast industry is continuing to evolve its emergency communications capabilities with “innovations” that may add pictorial or video content to EAS alerts and emergency messages. So the associations would like the commission to let the industry evolve public alerting capabilities on its own rather than issue a rulemaking. The FCC asked for more info.
It also wants to know if EAS and WEA need a common symbol set and how such symbols would be displayed on a TV, smartphone or other device.
And if it were to require EAS and WEA to use standardized symbols, which should it adopt? For instance the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation symbol library is publicly available for free and is supported by FEMA?
Amplifying WEA Earthquake Alerts
The U.S. Geological Survey told the FCC that the receipt of a WEA earthquake alert should trigger a verbal announcement using text-to-speech.
When seconds count, speech-based information prompt people to react more quickly, the USGS believes. It notes that the National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code requires in-building private mass notification system emergency alerts, like fire alerts, to include an intelligible audio message along with a visible notification recommendation.
The FCC wants feedback. How would verbal earthquake alerts work in a crowd when multiple phones go off? Should the commission require other types of WEA messages to be automatically spoken? Should alerts be issued in languages other than English? Should earthquake alerts have their own unique audio attention signal?
Retiring 90-character WEA Messages
Last, the commission wants to retire a requirement that mobile carriers participating in WEA support transmission of an 90-character-maximum alert message on elements of its network that don’t support a 360-character message.
This rule has meant that alerting authorities must submit a 90-character-maximum version of each WEA they sent to ensure that the alert can transit all networks and that they may also initiate a 360-character-maximum version to improve readability.
Emergency officials say the 90-character maximum is insufficient for modern alerting and that the requirement to support two versions of every message risks confusion for alerting authorities.
The FCC wants to know whether there are enough legacy networks or legacy devices in use to be concerned about incompatibility with longer messages.
Comments on all this are due Aug. 31. You can read the FNPRM here, starting with paragraph 41 on page 25. (Our story about what the FCC did in the first 40 pages can be found here.)
