December 6, 2013
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) periodically publishes news of interest, including releases from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and links to articles from various trade publications.
FirstNet Will Meet on December 16 and 17, 2013: The FirstNet Board will convene open public meetings of the Board Committees on December 16, 2013, in Denver, Colorado. There will be sequential meetings of FirstNet’s four committees: (1) Governance and Personnel Committee; (2) Finance, Audit and Budget Committee; (3) Planning and Technology Committee; and (4) Outreach Committee. The meetings are open to the public and press, and will be webcast. The FirstNet Board will convene an open public meeting on December 17, 2013, in Denver, Colorado 80207. This meeting is open to the public and press, and will be webcast.
FirstNet Releases RFI Regarding Applications: The First Responder Network Authority issued a request for information (RFI) on application platforms for the LTE-based nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) by issuing. “Mobile apps running on the FirstNet nationwide broadband network will transform the way public safety completes its mission,” said FirstNet General Manager Bill D’Agostino. “We want to hear from all interested stakeholders on their creative and innovative ideas on how this platform should operate.” The RFI seeks input on eight specific areas, including mobile device application solutions, mobile app stores, Big Data/ API and cloud solutions, public safety data from agencies, data security, app testing and certification, publisher interfaces, and identity management. RFI responses are due Jan. 17, 2014. To view the RFI, visit this link: http://www.npstc.org/download.jsp?tableId=37&column=217&id=2896&file=FirstNet%20Applications%20RFI.xlsx
Urgent Communications Reports that FirstNet has Stopped Negotiating with Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) Grant Recipients: FirstNet is awaiting word from some to determine whether their public-safety LTE projects can be integrated into the FirstNet nationwide broadband network for first responders, according to FirstNet General Manager Bill D’Agostino.
“We stopped negotiations on [Nov. 15], and we did not ask for any additional extensions,” D’Agostino said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications conducted at the LTE North America conference in Dallas.
To date, only two BTOP recipients—LA-RICS and the state of New Mexico—have signed a spectrum-lease agreement with FirstNet that would allow them to use the 20 MHz of contiguous 700 MHz broadband spectrum licensed to FirstNet. Although negotiations with BTOP entities have stopped, these entities still have the option of agreeing to language that FirstNet offered as of Nov. 15, D’Agostino said.
“There’s some that may [agree to a spectrum-lease deal]; that’s still to be determined,” he said, noting that such deals likely would be considered by the FirstNet board during its meeting scheduled for Dec. 17. Read More at: http://urgentcomm.com/public-safety-broadbandfirstnet/firstnet-halts-negotiations-btop-recipients?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UrgentCommMostRecent+(Urgent+Communications)
NPSTC Broadband Working Group Begins Work of Quantifying Launch Requirements: The scope of the effort will focus on quantifying only those existing requirements in the Launch SoR. So, quantitative requirements that are outside of the Launch SoR scope will be excluded from this SoR effort. The current target for completion of this project is April/May of 2014, in anticipation of a FirstNet RFP on the Enhanced Packet Core (EPC) due sometime in the summer of 2014.
The current plan is to do this work in two overall phases. The first phase will be a collaboration effort between both public safety and industry representatives to iron out the overall details of the work, while the second phase will be a public safety only effort to edit the results into a final vision from the public safety community.
The first step in phase one is to, based on the overall table of contents for the Launch SoR, create small (3-5 person) teams to go through each of the sections and make recommendations as to which of the requirements in their section should have companion quantitative requirements. The BBWG will bring all of these recommendations back together into a single spreadsheet that will be issued to the entire Statement of Requirements (SoR) group for comment. Once we have a final list of which quantitative requirements have companion quantitative requirements, we will reorganize as necessary and begin work. The BBWG is looking for volunteers from both public safety and industry for the following groups:
1. Governance
2. Policies and Procedures
3. User Services
4. Network Services
5. Transport Services
6. System Design
7. User Equipment
8. Local Operations Support
9. Migration and Evolution
10. Security
11. Priority and Quality of Service
If you would like to volunteer for more than one group that is ok. If you would like to lead a group, please indicate that in your response. Please email Volunteer@npstc.org with your interests and our team will assemble the various task groups. We are hoping to gather the volunteers and get underway the week of December 9th, with the intent to have a first draft completed around the first week of January.
PSCR R&D Roadmap Workshop Attendees: More than xxx public safety and industry participants attended the November Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Public Safety Broadband R&D Roadmap Workshop in Boulder, CO. The input and hard work from the communications community provided valuable inputs for PSCR as they look to the future of the program and of the nationwide public safety broadband network. To view the presentations and outputs of the workshop and a high-level workshop summary document, PSCR invites you to their website. http://www.pscr.gov/projects/broadband/700mhz_demo_net/meetings/roadmap_workshop_112013/roadmap_workshop_112013.php
Thanks for Re-signing with NPSTC’s Linked In Community: Due to a technical error, the NPSTC Community Linked In account was deleted in late October. At the time, NPSTC’s Linked In community hosted 1,134 members. We want you back. Linked-In Customer Service advised that us that the NPSTC community could not be restored, so we are starting over and wish to invite all 1,134 of you who were previously members of our group to rejoin us and bring your colleagues too. Click here to rejoin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/National-Public-Safety-Telecommunications-Council-6555062
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