Verizon Communications, Inc., treasures its public safety customers, Matt Ellis, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2017 Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference. “They are great customers,” Mr. Ellis said. But he defended the carrier’s decision not to bid on the First Responder Network Authority’s (FirstNet) request for proposals (RFP).

“We have a significant amount of low-band spectrum, and it just wasn’t as important for us to … bid on that as it was for others,” he said. He would not discuss whether the FirstNet system, which will be built by AT&T, Inc., was a threat to Verizon’s dominant share of the public safety market. Verizon has announced it will offer priority service and preemption to public safety customers, and it also plans to build a dedicated public safety core, matching AT&T’s offer (TR Daily, Aug. 15).

Courtesy TRDaily