The FCC has released its final report regarding the October 2023 National Test. This exercise sent a test EAS messages to stations via the IPAWS system as well as the traditional EAS system. Nationally, stations performed better that the last national test that was conducted in 2021. The report found:
The test message was received by 96.6% of EAS participants (increase from 89.3% in 2021). The overall retransmission success rate was 93.6% (increase from 87.1% in 2021). This significant improvement is likely due to initiation of the 2023 test alert via Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), which introduced additional resiliency that was not available during the over-the-air-only 2021 nationwide test.
While test participants reported less than one-third as many performance complications as compared to 2021, more test participants reported equipment configuration issues and equipment failures.
At the time of the test, approximately 23% of EAS equipment units, representing over 4,500 EAS participants, were either using outdated software or were using equipment that no longer supported regular software updates. Test results demonstrated that fully up-to-date equipment had the highest receipt and retransmission rates (97% and 95%, respectively), whereas equipment with software that is no longer supported had the lowest receipt and retransmission rates (90% and 85%, respectively).
Importantly, New York performed well in the tests. According to the FCC:
Thus, New York performed above the national average in both receiving and retransmitting the alerts. Nonetheless, there is room for improvement, and we will be working with stations to make sure these important messages are received and sent.
You can see the FCC’s EAS Report here.