FCC Gives Blue Alerts a Green Light

A new alert code has been added to the nation’s emergency alert system.

 

At its December Open Meeting, the Federal Communications Commission moved to amend the EAS rules by adding a new event code — a Blue Alert — that can be sent over the EAS and the Wireless Emergency Alert system. The alerts are designed to be used by state and local authorities to notify the public of threats to law enforcement and to help apprehend dangerous suspects.

 

Blue Alerts are designed to warn the public when there is information related to a law enforcement officer who is missing, seriously injured or killed in the line of duty, or when there is a threat to an officer. At the meeting, the commissioners welcomed the family members and colleagues of two New York City Police detectives who were killed in the line of duty in 2014, officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. These new codes are being in put in place to help protect officers in future, Chairman Ajit Pai said.

 

Source: Radio World

FCC Warns Operator About Two Stations

Agents from Enforcement Bureau made not one … not two … but eight different visits to a residential property in Lauderhill, Fla., that was allegedly illegally broadcasting radio signals on not one, but two different frequencies.

 

Earlier this month, agents from the bureau at the Federal Communications Commission warned Wilfrid Salomon of Lauderdale Lakes in a Notice of Unlicensed Operation. Direction-finding techniques found signals emanating from a palm tree-lined court in the Southwest Florida city. Signals were allegedly found to be broadcasting on frequency 107.1 MHz and 87.9 MHz from the same home.

 

Agents conducted field strength measurements of both signals and found that the signals exceeded 100 microvolts per meter at three meters, which is the maximum for unlicensed devices. In each Notice of Unlicensed Operation that it sends, the FCC clarifies that there is one exception to this licensing requirement: For certain transmitters operating at a power level that complies with standards established in Part 15 of the commission’s rules.

 

Source: Radio World