Key participants in alerting technology circles continue to discuss the proposed changes for EAS alerting, as put forth by the National Association of Broadcasters.
As we have reported, the NAB has petitioned the FCC to allow broadcasters to use EAS software to process messages, instead of an encoder/decoder box.
Sage Alerting Systems, which is a proponent of software-based alerts, recently met with members of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to further discuss some aspects of this debate, including the possible effect on equipment suppliers.
Harold Price and Chris Vournazos, representing Sage, said the company favors NAB’s petition, though they told the FCC they don’t believe the NAB proposal would end the traditional hardware approach.
“Sage believes that a software-based solution will not be the right choice for every user,” it stated in the filing.
There also was general agreement among the parties during the meeting, according to a Sage filing, that terms such as “software EAS” or “EAS virtualization” actually don’t describe what is being presented by the NAB properly.
“EAS on non-specialized hardware’ or ‘EAS co-hosted on other broadcast components’ is closer,” Sage wrote, but it acknowledged that this “lacks a certain zing.”
The NAB petition calls for EAS software to reside within a broadcaster’s plant, running on trusted and certified hardware platforms. The proposal is voluntary, so broadcasters would not be forced to transition. The NAB has asked the FCC to expedite a rulemaking.
Security considerations also were discussed, but Sage dismissed cybersecurity worries, saying the relevant issues “are known and are not fundamentally different than any other IT component of a broadcast facility.”
Due to supply chain constraints and legacy component obsolescence, Sage last year stopped building new EAS hardware for broadcasters, while continuing to provide support for devices already in the field.
The FCC staff did ask Sage about disruption that the changes could bring to current EAS equipment manufacturers, a concern that has been raised in comments by manufacturer Digital Alert Systems.
Sage told the commission that concerns about “disadvantaging incumbents” should be of little concern to the FCC. “The original EAS rules in 1994 did not worry about EBS equipment suppliers,” it says.
Sage says it will offer EAS software if the FCC allows it, which would be “suitable for inclusion in other broadcast equipment …”
It concluded by reemphasizing that much of what the NAB is asking for has been going on for years. “None of these concepts are new,” it said.
The NAB’s petition contemplates autonomous EAS functions at the edge of a broadcaster’s operation, which its backers say is a proven approach in other resilient and secure systems in modern broadcast frameworks.
A virtual implementation would be backwards-compatible to operation of EAS, according to those familiar with the NAB’s plan, and products brought to market would interoperate with legacy equipment.
Separately, representatives of NAB and several broadcast companies also met last week with FCC staff to clarify several items in the original petition. Steve Shultis of New York Public Radio, Dan Mettler of iHeartMedia, Peter Sockett of Capitol Broadcasting Company and Lamar Smith of Beasley Media Group joined NAB executives Kelly Willams and Larry Walke.
The broadcasters noted the breadth of support in the record for the NAB’s petition and talked about the flexibility it would offer broadcasters.
“Our forward-looking approach would also improve EAS readiness by enabling the immediate failover to redundant, geographically diverse equipment if a disaster disrupts EAS at a station’s facility,” NAB said in the recap of its meeting.
The NAB reiterated that its proposal envisions functional testing and the certification of encoder/decoder software, similar to the process followed by today’s EAS manufacturers.
In response to a question from bureau staff, the group explained that the process produces a “certification that indicates the minimum accepted parameters for the platform on which the EAS software could run.”
“Adopting NAB’s proposal would be nothing new for broadcasters given their experience with Nielsen PPM ratings, watermarking software and other software systems that are routinely used in broadcasting,” according to the NAB summary.
To ensure continued functionality, they said weekly and monthly tests and scans by broadcasters could quickly detect any problems. Cybersecurity would be handled similarly as it is with today’s EAS devices and other software systems used in broadcasting, NAB says, with stations “guarding their perimeters” by confining EAS systems behind tested firewalls.
The NAB and the broadcasters dismissed what they called “overblown claims” by DAS that the FCC may have to create an entirely new regulatory regime to oversee a software-based ENDEC option, or need to impose additional specific requirements for that approach.
“We do not support an unduly burdensome, bifurcated regulatory regime for hardware versus future software implementations, but rather, a streamlined process for both approaches.”
The group said in the meeting that NAB’s proposal is consistent with the goals of the FCC’s Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding “because it would allow the use of a software-based EAS ENDEC would relieve entities that choose this option of the regulatory and practical burdens described above that are attached to hardware devices.”
Comments on the NAB petition (PS Docket No. 15-94) can be found online at www.fcc.gov.
[Related: “Sage Alerting Systems Looks to the Future of EAS“]
