North Rye Brook, NY - Apr 6, 2011 - Sage Alerting Systems announced today that its Digital Endec model 3644 has successfully completed FEMA's IPAWS conformity assessment (CA). The CA program verifies alert and warning products conform to the FEMA Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) requirements for the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), the FCC-mandated addition to the Emergency Alert System.

Harold Price, president of Sage Alerting Systems, said, "In a protocol as broad and open ended as CAP, it is necessary for the various hardware and software components of the EAS system to use a core set of CAP features in exactly same way so a message originated by one manufacturer and received by another manufacturer will appear on radio, TV, and cable systems with the same information, whether delivered on audio, radio text services, or video crawl."

As one of the founding members of the EAS/CAP Industry Group, Sage has worked to strengthen the interoperability aspects of the broadcast industry's use of CAP, first by participating in the design of the IPAWS Profile, and as one of the writers of the CAP-EAS Implementation Guide. A successful completion of the CA shows that a CAP/EAS product conforms to the requirements of CAP for use with IPAWS. The CA program, in conjunction with an FCC Part 11 certification, shows that the device is ready to help broadcasters meet the FCC's September 2011 compliance deadline.

Radio magazine is checking with other manufacturers to see if their products have also passed the conformity assessment. Antwane Johnson, IPAWS division director, told Radio magazine's sister publication that other companies have passed and FEMA/IPAWS is in the process of providing those companies their test reports.