FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts today (Wednesday, October 4).
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The Federal Communications Commission offers affordable broadband to qualifying households.
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Governor Eric Holcomb and Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Jennifer McCormick have announced a partnership that aims to give all Hoosier students access to the tools and resources needed for digital learning with high-speed internet in every classroom.
The state is teaming up with Education Super Highway (ESH), the nation’s leading non-profit focused on upgrading internet access in every public school classroom in America, at no cost to tax payers. ESH will work with the Indiana Department of Education and local school districts to determine need, whether that’s fiber infrastructure, greater and more affordable bandwidth or Wi-Fi upgrades. Continue reading
The Indiana Attorney General’s Office is touting new rules to constituents that could help prevent robocalls and other text messaging scams.
The rules come courtesy of the Federal Communications Commission – which has proposed allowing phone carriers to put call-blocking technologies on devices. According to information released by the Attorney General’s office, the technology exists, but current FCC rules disallow it.
EMA Director Ted Bombagetti explained to them the process to declare a local communication emergency, which would give the county the authority to do what needs to be done to restore full radio communications while getting the FCC licensing caught up at a later time. County Attorney Martin Lucas reviewed the information and gave it his approval.
Firefighters and others using radio communication equipment attended a meeting Monday night called by Starke County EMA Director, Ted Bombagetti, to explain the future mandate to change radio bands. Because of space demands, the FCC is compressing the bands down to what is called “narrow-banding.”
“There’s too many people that want to get radios and there’s not enough frequencies open,” explained Bombagetti. “So the FCC has decided that they’re going to cut the space in half between each frequency. Right now, we’re operating in a space of 25 mhz and they’re going to cut it to 12 1/2. This allows more licenses to become available to the public.”
