The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Bureau) has adopted an order granting a limited waiver of the Commission’s Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) rules to permit EAS Participants and Commercial Mobile Service Providers to participate in a test to be conducted by the State of Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety (Minnesota DPS). Specifically, Minnesota DPS sent a letter to the Bureau requesting a waiver of the Commission’s rules to allow participating CMS Providers and EAS Participants to participate in a “live code” EAS test using the Civil Danger Warning (CDW) event code. This test will be a combined live EAS and end-to-end WEA test, conducted between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. (CDT) on Wednesday, June 18, 2018, with a backup date of Tuesday, June 19, 2018. The Bureau’s waiver is conditioned upon Minnesota DPS providing plenty of pre-test notification and community outreach, including outreach to the public, press, and relevant state, local and Tribal government agencies, and making it clear that members of the public may receive multiple test messages.
