NAB, ACA at Odds on ATSC 3.0 Transition, Before Emergency Alerts Hearing
An NAB official will peg approval of ATSC 3.0 to emergency alerts during a Wednesday hearing on the topic and warn that a botched repacking after the broadcast TV incentive auction could interfere. “If the FCC approves Next Gen TV, a television broadcaster will be able to simultaneously deliver geo-targeted, rich media alerts to an unlimited number of enabled fixed, mobile and handheld devices across their entire coverage area,” NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny will testify. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said he hopes for commission approval of ATSC 3.0 by year’s end.
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Matheny plans to illustrate the changes: “Rather than simply running an EAS [emergency alert system] alert or crawl over regularly scheduled broadcast programming for an entire market’s viewing audience (and then only reaching those who are watching), a Next Gen TV signal could wake up enabled devices and reach the entire universe of devices within its contour, at the consumer’s discretion,” he will tell the House Communications Subcommittee, convening at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn. “Broadcasters can provide targeted neighborhood-specific alerts that include text, graphics (such as Doppler radar animations or an evacuation route), pictures and even detailed video-on-demand descriptions.”
The American Cable Association wrote lawmakers to express “a variety of concerns about the migration from the existing standard (ATSC 1.0) to the new ATSC 3.0 standard,” President Matt Polka said in his letter. “Even though ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 are both ‘digital’ signals, ATSC 3.0 is not ‘backward compatible’ with ATSC 1.0. ... Consumers will need new televisions or new converter boxes -- or subscribe to a cable operator that could ‘downconvert’ the new signals into the existing format. This lack of compatibility raises real concerns for emergency alerts.” Polka referred to a scenario where viewers without ATSC 3.0-compatible equipment would receive “no alerts from the station at all” after a station’s replacement of 1.0 transmissions with 3.0 transmissions. He criticized a broadcaster simulcasting remedy, saying some broadcasters no longer back such an approach and simulcasts would not reach all viewers.
“ACA’s silly rhetoric opposing broadcasters’ transitioning to Next Gen TV is typical of an industry that abhors competition,” an NAB spokesman responded. “The idea that broadcasters would adopt a new transmission system that diminishes our emergency alerting capabilities does not pass the laugh test.”
Qualcomm Director-Engineering Farrokh Khatibi will tout device-assisted geo-targeting as one way to enhance the wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system, launched in 2012. “A well-managed application on mobile devices may then use this information to determine if it is inside the alert area and act accordingly,” he will tell lawmakers. The wireless industry is looking at improving end-to-end security and applying event codes, he will say.
Increasing the character limit of WEAs to 360, adopted in September, was “key” and “a catalyst for the improved granularity” that’s necessary, says CGM Advisors CEO Chris Guttman-McCabe, a former CTIA official now representing Advanced Computers and Communications. Device-enhanced geo-targeting “will future-proof wireless emergency alerting, and set emergency alerting in general on a fantastic course,” he said, touting the software alert system that the company he is representing has developed.