KELOWNA – There might not be any buy-in from the country’s largest BDUs for Pelmorex’s new Emergency Alert Service yet, but governments are excited to finally have something like this in Canada.
During a session at the CommTech Trade Show and Seminars here in Kelowna, Capella Telecommunications’ representative Dave McCreath outlined the decades of public service American broadcasters have provided (at the behest of their government), first by the Emergency Broadcast System and now with its own, ever-changing, EAS.
Despite numerous calls over the years to create our own or copy the U.S., Canada has never had such a system.
Over the years, the American Emergency Alert System has changed what it can deliver and the technology used to deliver it, who delivers the messages and how it is received and broadcast. And in the States, American government has mandated that all broadcasters, cable companies, satellite providers and IPTV carriers all comply with its EAS rules.
If there’s an emergency alert (severe weather or other), the U.S. industry must transmit it. They must also test and maintain their equipment on a very regular basis and be able to geographically target any such warnings so those directly in the path of a hurricane, for example, are warned.
In Canada, the broadcast and distribution industry ignored repeated deadlines set by the CRTC to come up with its own EAS. So last year, when the Regulator granted Pelmorex Communications’ weather channels Météomédia and The Weather Network preferred status and mandatory carriage, it also told the broadcaster to have the EAS service it had been pitching for years up and running in a 12 months.
So, 363 days later, it will be ready to go. It launches June 9.
The Pelmorex EAS will collect public alerting messages from authorized government authorities and distribute those public alerting messages to broadcasting undertakings such as radio and television stations, and to cable and satellite TV companies.
Pelmorex has no say (or even any opinion) on how that information will be used by the distributors and broadcasters. For its part, the CRTC has said for now, opt-in is voluntary.
“We’ve placed no restriction on who can access it. We don’t even have to know,” said Pelmorex SVP regulatory and strategic affairs Paul Temple in a phone interview. “You can just take the feed. It’s there.”
However, on its 29-member governance council, Pelmorex has members from multiple levels of government, radio and TV broadcasters, small cablecos… everyone but the big BDUs.
“The buy in from government is great,” added Temple. “It’s pretty straightforward and easy for them to use.”
Pelmorex wants all interested parties to have access to necessary technical information related its EAS service, whether it’s a big broadcaster or cableco or an individual web site or wireless company. The data is collected and disseminated at no charge to the last mile distributors or government bodies.
“They have been at this quite intensively for a year,” said McCreath, whose company sells an encoder/decoder box carriers will need to receive and disseminate the emergency info to its customers.
McCreath however, also believes that once it’s up and running “the CRTC is likely to encourage non-participants,” and potentially make opt in mandatory.
