Sage Alerting Systems President Harold Price offers three broad “takeaways” from EAS sessions at the recent NAB Show. He shared them with Radio World.
There is a multi-vendor ecosystem that is up and running. The FEMA booth again showed that Common Alerting Protocol-delivered EAS messages can be generated, transported and broadcast in various ways, Price noted. There are two different satellite delivery systems for CAP messages, and both RDS and HD Radio text can be used for enhanced alert delivery to the radio audience.
Several devices from multiple vendors have now passed FEMA’s CAP Conformity Assessment, showing that they meet the requirements of FEMA’s three CAP definition documents. This completes one of the final milestones, and compliant equipment is now available on the market. For Sage, this means any of the Sage Digital ENDECs (model 3644) in the field can be upgraded to the tested version with a free software download, available soon from the company website.
No further delays are planned; that’s according to Gregory Cooke of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. He said any reason for a delay can be added to the record by filing comments to the FCC proceeding, Price told Radio World. When someone from the audience pointed out that states would not have updated state plans in place by September, Cooke said that this was not a sufficient reason for further delay. “We may, in fact, really be in the final stretch,” Price wrote.
