Adding three emergency alert system (EAS) event codes to the National Weather Service's dissemination suite will require a factory software update, Monroe Electronics said in an ex parte notice in docket 04-296 Friday. It said it was responding to a request from the Public Safety Bureau. The NWS requested additional EAS event codes and changes to marine areas, said the company. “The sheer scale of deployment of this EAS equipment will require substantial lead time to fully implement any changes to geocodes (FIPS) [Federal Information Processing Standards] or event codes.” If the FCC approves these event codes or changes, Monroe Electronics will need to release a factory update for its four FCC EAS compliance products, and users will need to download the update from Monroe’s site and apply it to each EAS device, said the EAS equipment maker.

The Association of Public Television Stations will make a model channel sharing agreement available on its website by week's end, an APTS spokeswoman emailed us Tuesday. A previous model agreement was sent to APTS member stations in December, but a revised version is being prepared for posting online, she said.

EWTN Global Catholic Network is available on Amazon Fire TV, EWTN said in a news release Friday. Amazon Fire customers can watch live streams of EWTN’s TV and radio networks and video-on-demand of its daily homilies, devotionals, live shows and news programs in English, German and Spanish, it said. Customers in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. can access programming through Amazon Fire or Amazon Fire TV Stick, it said. EWTN is located in the lifestyle category in Amazon Fire’s apps, it said.

Peak period mobile bandwidth consumption per user will increase fivefold in the next three years, said a mobile broadband bandwidth demand study done by ACG Research and sponsored by network specialist Ciena, a news release from Ciena said. Macro cell capacity requirements will increase from 260 Mbps to 1.5 Gbps in five years, the Thursday release said. Increased device penetration and new entertainment services and applications caused “growing bottlenecks” for service provider backhaul networks, it said. ACG’s study focused on peak period mobile bandwidth requirements (bits per second) instead of total data usage (bytes per month) to provide bandwidth projections, it said. Service providers should prepare to deploy mobile backhaul solutions that support 10 Gbps “to meet this projected bandwidth and ensure quality of experience,” it said.

Saguna Networks, a mobile edge computing company, closed a financing round Thursday with investments from SoftBank Ventures Korea and Akami Technologies, it said in a news release Thursday. Saguna Networks will use the funding to expand its presence in North America, Asia and Europe and to accelerate product development, it said.

The FCC Media Bureau Policy Division started its 2015 equal employment opportunity (EEO) audits, the commission said in a public notice Wednesday. The commission mailed its first batch of audit letters to randomly selected radio and TV stations Feb. 6, it said. The commission annually audits 5 percent of broadcast licensees’ EEO programs, it said. The notice included a list of radio and TV stations that received audit letters. Stations must post their recent EEO public file report on their website or corporate site, it said.

Cinedigm is partnering with Bright Educational Media to launch Bright, a multiplatform digital “edutainment” channel for children in preschool and elementary school, it said in a news release Tuesday. The channel will launch later this year and be available on multiple consumer devices, it said. The channel’s content will be curated from Cinedigm’s film and TV library and outside producers, it said.

Canada’s broadband companies and third-party video streaming services are competing with over-the-top programming, a Moody’s Investors Service report said. Canadian TV distributors can use traditional channels, the Internet and subscription options to “counter some of the competition from Internet-based programming,” Moody’s said Wednesday. Broadband companies will survive the competition because “most of Canada’s television broadcasters are owned by its broadband companies, which also own the country’s television distributors,” it said. Advertising will continue supporting TV programming, it said.

The FCC Media Bureau extended by two weeks the deadlines for comments on its NPRM on expanding the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor to include some streaming video services, it said in a public notice Tuesday. Comments are now due March 3, replies March 18, the notice said. The extension follows requests last week for a 30-day extension from NAB and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (see 1502060037). “Although the parties seek a 30-day extension, we believe that a two-week extension will give the public enough time to respond to the NPRM,” the PN said.

Cinedigm, partnering with TV4 Entertainment, will offer niche over-the-top channels that TV4 Entertainment will distribute through its online video distribution platform, the company said in a news release Monday. The companies will focus the channels on preschoolers, kids and tweens, it said. The first channel from the partnership will launch later this year, it said.