EAS Item Seen as Controversial, Among Items Pulled From Agenda
The FCC Wednesday pulled a draft emergency alert system order from the next day's commissioners' meeting agenda, after industry and agency officials said it was controversial. Five other agenda items also were pulled, though four were adopted on circulation.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
FCC officials said Wednesday a second major item, an order on a common standard for the transition from text technology to real-time text, stands a better chance of getting a vote Thursday. But the order has raised some industry red flags (see 1612080054). Commissioner Mike O’Rielly partly dissented on the NPRM proposing rules because of concerns that they are too prescriptive (see 1604280055).That order remained on the agenda.
The 200-plus page EAS draft item contained provisions on cybersecurity and other changes to EAS that the Republican commissioners find objectionable, an FCC official told us. Since Congress has asked FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler not to approve controversial items, the item is seen as unlikely to be taken up by this FCC, an industry official said. The dissension over the item is seen as partially connected to Wheeler's investigation into zero rating (see 1612070065), which Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly have criticized as not being in keeping with the congressional directive, industry and agency officials have told us.
Provisions in the item related to keeping alert systems secure from cyberattack were the focus of the Republican commissioners' objections, an FCC official told us, and also were targeted by NCTA, Comcast and the American Cable Association in lobbying visits last week, according to several ex parte filings in docket 15-94. The draft item would require multichannel video programming distributors to protect against cybersecurity attacks, but it isn’t specific about what is required, industry officials told us. “Vague standards for enforcement action in response to security breaches would leave EAS Participants without objective notice of their regulatory obligations and invite second-guessing of commercially reasonable security practices,” Comcast said in an ex parte filing. A provision that gives industry five years to devise a system for preventing false alerts is also seen as too vague, an industry official told us.
Concern over Wheeler's actions on zero rating likely fueled Republican objections to the EAS item, an industry official told us. Wheeler's action was seen on the eighth floor as an indication that he may not abide by the congressional “pencils-down” request, an FCC official told us. The zero rating action has made it less likely that Wheeler's office and the Republican commissioners will come to an accord on the item, an industry official said. O'Rielly objected to the cybersecurity aspects of the proposed rules back in January when they were still at the NPRM stage.
Along with cybersecurity concerns, the pay-TV industry objects to provisions in the item that mandate a 24-hour reporting deadline for false system alerts. “Cable operators automatically pass through alerts as they are received, and have no way of knowing at the time whether the alert is false or genuine,” ACA said in an ex parte filing. “It is possible that an operator may not learn of a false alert for several days or even weeks." The draft item also contains provisions that have received little objection, to make state EAS plans more uniform, and includes a Further NPRM on possible changes to “selective override” rules that allow MVPDs to change viewers' channels to a centralized emergency information channel.
The four items that were withdrawn after being adopted on circulation were: an NPRM to update rules to ease the deployment of recently proposed nongeostationary-satellite orbit and fixed-satellite service orbit systems; an order evaluating a "Wireless Network Resiliency Cooperative Framework" submitted by wireless industry companies; an order updating Freedom of Information Act regulations under a 2016 FOIA law; and an item combining two orders regarding the assignment of licenses held by Maritime Communications/Land Mobile, LLC. The one item withdrawn without being adopted was an order addressing a petition of reconsideration of a slamming and deceptive marketing fine of Long-Distance Inc. A consent agenda item was also withdrawn without being adopted.