State: FCC Adopts Blue Alerts, Colorado and Illinois Opt-In to the FirstNet Plan, Nevada Outage Reporting Rules
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FCC Adopts Blue Alerts
The FCC revised its Emergency Alert System (EAS) rules to add a three-character code - BLU - as a new EAS event code to enable the delivery of Blue Alerts over the EAS and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) systems. Blue Alerts can be used by state and local authorities to notify the public of threats to law enforcement and to help apprehend dangerous suspects. This includes warnings when there is actionable information related to a law enforcement officer who is missing, seriously injured or killed in the line of duty, or if a violent suspect is loose in a particular community (including instructions on what to do if the suspect is spotted). State officials can send these warnings to the public through broadcast, cable, satellite, and wireline video providers or through the WEA to consumers’ wireless phones. The Order provides a 12-month implementation period for Blue Alerts to be delivered over the EAS and 18 months for delivery over the WEA system.
Colorado and Illinois Opt-In to FirstNet Plan
Governor John Hickenlooper announced that Colorado will join FirstNet, the wireless broadband network to be developed specifically to improve communications among first responders and public safety. “We are opting to allow FirstNet to make an investment in Colorado that promises to make our state more resilient against threats to our safety,” said Hickenlooper. “We, together with Colorado’s Governing Board, are confident that the investment will not only benefit public safety, but also provide much needed telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas of our state.”
Colorado is home to FirstNet’s technology headquarters. The facility, located in Boulder, hosts more than 50 personnel and the FirstNet Innovation and Test Lab - a state-of-the-art laboratory in which FirstNet and AT&T test functionality and features unique to FirstNet’s mission-critical broadband network.
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner announced a new partnership between Illinois and FirstNet that will ensure that the lifesaving advantages of enhanced wireless broadband technology are available to public safety personnel statewide. "Communication is a life or death proposition in emergencies. Opting in to FirstNet’s dedicated network means first responders — fire, EMS, police — always have an open channel when it comes to doing their lifesaving work," Rauner said.
Nevada Outage Reporting Rules
The PUC invited interested parties to file comments by January 3, 2018, on a petition asking it to revise its outage reporting requirements to mirror those adopted by the FCC. The Petition, filed by CenturyLink, AT&T, Frontier, and the Nevada Telecommunications Association, asks the PUC to revise its rules to measure reportable service disruptions in terms of OC3 minutes rather than DS3 minutes. If the PUC cannot amend its rules by February 1, 2018, the effective date of the federal rules, the companies have requested a waiver of the current DS3 threshold or permission to deviate from that threshold to report outages in OC3 minutes consistent with federal rules. Click here for more information.
Looking for additional details regarding this development? Get the complete TMI Briefing.
TMI Briefing Service subscribers see FCC Briefing dated 6/26/17.
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The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Briefing.
