On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 5:45 PM Max Harmony via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:

On 02 Jan 2021, at 19.18, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
> I think the challenge here is that there's a category of people
> who don't have cell phones, who don't have cable TV, but
> receive content over their internet connection. I happen to
> live with someone like that, so I know it's a non-zero portion
> of the population.

Emergency alerts are also on OTA TV (and radio), not just cable. People whose sole communications device is a computer can subscribe to FEMA'S IPAWS feed. People who can't (or don't want to) do that can use a weather radio (despite the name, NWS broadcasts all hazards alerts, not just weather). The most likely answer to "how do we get streaming services to provide emergency alerts?" is to make them redistribute the IPAWS feed and update their software to make the updates human-readable. It would probably be cheaper to just tell people where to find free IPAWS software instead of making every streaming service add the feature, and, as a last resort, give people who need them free weather radios.

The FEMA IPAWS system doesn't seem well-suited for end-users to

subscribe to it. Of note is the specific restriction:

Providers cannot stress IPAWS servers with excessive requests.

Which might hint that the FEMA servers aren't intended to support

hundreds of thousands of individuals connecting directly to them

to request alert data.

It doesn't look like there's currently any internet-capable way of

consuming the IPAWS feed, at least that a quick search engine

dive turns up. Wondering if any of the folks here know of providers

that have signed up with FEMA to redistribute the IPAWS feed

for free? (Yes, I found WeatherMessage, but their pricing and

platform restrictions made them a non-starter).

Thanks!

Matt