Satellite companies (Dish/DirecTV) are certainly licensed or their ‘birds’ couldn’t send a signal down. That puts them under the FCC control, including EAS mandates. Ditto satellite radio (Sirius/XM).
Cable companies transmit into wire/optical cable which is never supposed to radiate on the air (but do). I made a presumption that they were also licensed but I could be mistaken. They are a power unto themselves (they think at least) making demands of broadcast stations for clean streams, overriding content and other such nonsense. They’re often a terror and if the public knew what went on behind the scenes...
If they aren’t licensed, they are still under Federal domain (interstate traffic etc.). Unplugging a mandated program is inexcusable, they should be publically flogged. Consumers don’t have many choices, but they need to be informed that the cable company is being so irresponsible. They’re not unlike a 2 year child with me me me me me mine mine mine mine no no no no with real tears when they’re spanked.
It’s not the spectrum of the cable company, it is OUR spectrum and managed by the FCC. Get over it cable, you CAN be replaced.
Boo hoo, take the good with the bad and grow up cable. You do wrong, you’ll get spanked again. Do it often enough and maybe you’ll learn something.
On the other hand, they provide the best internet service (faster, quieter and more reliable than satellite and phone based) but at a cost that is profit based instead of service based.
But my point was that the EAS is not utilizing ‘common’ modes of communication systems of today. It was designed when everybody listened to radio and got TV from an antenna some 50 years ago.
For example, send the EAS bulletin to EVERY cell tower so that it can relay alerts to EVERY cell phone on that tower (which would also allow local emergency broadcasts in a specific geographic area). That would connect with greater than 75% of the population in short order (who doesn’t have a cell nearby?).
Because these services (cell, internet based) cross state lines, they fall under Federal domain. It would be in the services best interest (hello, phone companies?) to create the EAS relay system before they’re told to do it; because now they can design an efficient system for their networks instead of being told what/how to do it. The tools are already in place, USE them.
Rick
From: Daithi
Rick - went a bit beyond licensed broadcast stations in that it also included all cable providers too. Like you I am not surprised that there were some glitches given that this is the first ever test. In my opinion they should do a test like this quarterly.
The Cable industry would fight regular tests tooth and nail however. You could not believe all the grief I went through to test my local override system with our local cable company. In my part of the world CATV companies are trying to eliminate the override systems that exist. The only time I actually attempted to override for real, not a test, I found the CATV company had disconnected the dedicated phone line (that was for a tornado warning).
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