APCO Proposes Revisions to Draft WEA Rules

APCO proposed revisions to draft wireless emergency alert rules, Thursday in FCC docket 15-91. The filing responds to the draft order circulated for the Jan. 30 commissioners' meeting (see 1801090050). APCO asked to clarify that a commercial mobile service provider’s “ability to claim that its network infrastructure is technically incapable of matching the specified target area is limited to circumstances including when the target area is outside of the Participating CMS Provider’s network coverage area, when mobile devices have location services disabled, and when legacy networks cannot be updated to support this functionality.” In all other cases, “the CMS Provider must deliver an Alert Message to 100 percent of the target area with no more than 0.1 of a mile overshoot,” APCO said. It asked the FCC to order that carriers “transmit Alert Message polygon coordinates to mobile devices without affecting the 360 character allotment for displayable Alert Message text,” with requirements kicking in Nov. 30, 2019.