WASHINGTON, D.C. — The non-profit group representing educational non-commercial TV stations across the U.S. is urging the FCC to explore using television datacasting technologies to help fill wireless coverage gaps when cell service is interrupted during disasters.

In comments filed with the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) proposed testing the use of public television datacasting to deliver a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) to a home alerting gateway which then passes the WEA to home devices, including cell phones, tablets, interactive voice assistants and other home connected devices, via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies.

This home alerting gateway, which would work with datacasting in both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 broadcast technologies, is in development and will be ready for testing in early 2024. APTS says the device is inexpensive and easy to install and use.

According to the filing, datacasting via public television spectrum, with broadcasting’s one-to-many delivery model, is efficient, reliable and cost effective, has a broad geographic reach and can serve an important role in WEA contingency planning.

Local public television stations use a slice of broadcast spectrum to deliver encrypted video, files and other data for public safety communications and other innovative uses. Approximately 120 public television stations are already equipped for datacasting, and the number of stations continues to grow.

“Public safety is an essential part of public television’s mission to serve the American people,” said APTS President/CEO Patrick Butler. “Public television stations have worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to demonstrate the effectiveness of our public safety communications capability in flood control and evacuation, school shooting scenarios, large crowd management, over-water emergency communications and other life-saving applications.

Public television stations have also partnered with the California Office of Emergency Services to reduce the early earthquake warning standard from 30 seconds to less than 3 seconds. “We would be honored to partner with the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to further serve communities across the country with public television’s lifesaving datacasting technology,” Butler said.