FCC Reaches $1.1 Million Settlement With Charter over EAS Violation
The FCC Enforcement Bureau has reached a $1.1 million settlement with Charter Communications over the company's temporary deactivation of several emergency alert system devices for upgrades to comply with new EAS requirements, said an order and consent decree Thursday. Charter…
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took the devices out of service to meet a December 2023 deadline for the upgrades and notified the FCC Public Safety Bureau that EAS devices at three dozen cable headends, covering 1 million Charter viewers, would go out of service for the Oct. 4, 2023, nationwide EAS test. Charter “believed in good faith” that it was in compliance because of FCC rules that give a 60-day period for replacing defective equipment, the order and consent decree said. The Public Safety Bureau maintained that Charter’s devices didn't fall under the defective equipment rules because they weren’t defective, the order and consent decree said. Along with the forfeiture, the decree requires that Charter create a compliance training program and file regular reports with the FCC for one year.