Broadband

FirstNet Reviews Updated Strategic Plan

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At a meeting featuring the first fully constituted board in two years, First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) officials today outlined the authority’s draft FirstNet 2.0 strategic plan governing its actions through 2022.

Among other actions at today’s meeting, an AT&T, Inc., executive complained that Verizon Communications, Inc., is misleading the public safety community in the way it markets its public safety core.

Today’s last quarterly meeting of 2018, which was also a joint meeting of the board’s four committees, was the first for Edward Horowitz as board chairman and the first for five new board members appointed in October (TR Daily, Oct. 31). In opening the meeting, which was held in a suburban Virginia hotel not far from FirstNet’s headquarters, Mr. Horowitz said he is “very proud” of the progress that AT&T, FirstNet’s network partner, has made in deploying the network. He then introduced each of the new board members.

“They all together, collectively, bring an extraordinarily diverse set of backgrounds and skills in the areas of public safety, telecommunications, business, technology, elective office, and military and public service,” said Mr. Horowitz, who has been reappointed to another board term. “It’s a pretty powerful group, and I know that we will have a robust dialogue when it comes time to make various decisions and recommendations.”

Mr. Horowitz also noted that Kathleen Kraninger has been replaced as the Office of Management and Budget’s designee on the board because she has been confirmed by the Senate to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The new OMB designee is Dana Wade, OMB’s program associate director-general government programs.

The board approved separate resolutions praising the service of former board members Sue Swenson, Jeff Johnson, Kevin McGinnis, and Annise Parker.

Board member Teri Takai said that Ms. Swenson and Mr. Johnson, the former chairwoman and vice chairman of the board, “helped form the culture of the board. … They have left us a legacy of how the board should operate.”

Board members also cited Mr. McGinnis’ work as the board’s tribal liaison and his representation of the EMS community on the board. Mr. McGinnis has joined the board’s Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC). Board member Paul Patrick will be the new tribal liaison on the board. Continue reading →

Andy Seybold’s Public Safety Advocate, December 6, 2018

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Looking Back and Looking Forward.  As we enter the 21st month of the 25-year contract between FirstNet the Authority and FirstNet (Built with AT&T), the last three of this year’s Public Safety Advocates will examine what has already transpired and what may lie ahead for FirstNet in 2019. As you read these three Advocates, keep in mind that had the contract been awarded to a vendor that was focused simply on building out Band 14 (the public safety spectrum), this vendor would only have been required to have 60-percent of the network built out in metro areas at this point in time.

Instead, the RFP winner, AT&T, offered up all of its existing LTE spectrum plus Band 14. This had a significant impact on public safety communications. First, today, only 21 months into the contract, FirstNet (Built with AT&T) is providing far more than 60-percent coverage in metro areas with full priority access including pre-emption where and when needed. Further, AT&T has stated that as it continues to build out its own LTE network, the FirstNet network will also have access and when it starts building out its 5G system, FirstNet will be part of that, too.

The questions I will ask and try to answer are about Push-To-Talk (PTT), both on- and off-network, coverage that still needs to be completed in metro, suburban, and rural areas, and finally what lies ahead for 2019.

All this will be weighed against goals that created FirstNet: To have a Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) for public safety’s use including full pre-emption. We have not yet reached this goal but it is still in early in the development of the network. Some believe we can come close to achieving this goal but there will be some agencies that do not join FirstNet, at least in the next few years. I have to believe that as these agencies recognize the advantages of fully interoperable communications for the first time in the history of public safety communications, they will join in and this goal will eventually be realized.  Read the Entire Post here. Continue reading →

FCC to Consider High-Cost, Spectrum, Robocall, Texting Items Dec. 12

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The FCC at its Dec. 12 meeting plans to consider items to provide additional high-cost support funding for rate of return (RoR) carriers while encouraging them to deploy faster broadband service and to establish an incentive auction format for allocating licenses next year in the agency’s spectrum frontiers proceeding.

The FCC also plans to vote on items addressing robocalling, the regulatory status of texting, a consolidated communications marketplace report mandated by Congress earlier this year, the agency’s quadrennial review of its media ownership rules, and rules governing the display of broadcast licenses.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m.

“Because of the closure of the federal government for a National Day of Mourning for President George H.W. Bush on Wednesday, December 5, the Commission has determined that it is in the public interest to delay the onset of the sunshine period prohibition contained in Section 1.1203 of the Commission’s rules, 47 C.F.R. § 1.1203,” according to the “sunshine” notice, which was released one day early today because of the FCC’s closure tomorrow. “Accordingly, consistent with Section 1.1200(a) of the Commission’s rules, 47 C.F.R. § 1.1200(a), the Commission has modified its rules so that the sunshine period prohibition will begin at 11:59 PM on Thursday, December 6, rather than at 11:59 PM on Wednesday, December 5.”

The text of the Connect America Fund (CAF) draft report and order, further notice of proposed rulemaking (FNPRM), and order on reconsideration in WC dockets 10-90, 14-58 and 07-135 and CC docket 01-92 is aimed at addressing “the challenges that rate-of-return carriers face by taking steps to promote broadband deployment, ensure the efficient use of resources, and provide sufficient and predictable support necessary to increase broadband deployment.” Continue reading →

NIST Eyes Cybersecurity of Public Safety Devices

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology today published a draft report to explore ways to ensure the cybersecurity of the smartphones, tablets, and wearables that public safety officials are increasingly using on the job.

“Public safety practitioners utilizing the forthcoming nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN) will have smartphones, tablets, and wearables at their disposal.  Although these devices should enable first responders to complete their missions, any influx of new technologies will introduce new security vulnerabilities,” NIST said.

“The overarching goal of this work is to identify security objectives for public safety mobile and wearable devices, enabling jurisdictions to more easily select and purchase secure devices and device manufacturers to design and develop them,” NIST added.

The report noted that public safety workers often use and transmit more sensitive information, such as medical data, than the typical commercial user.  NIST set a Jan. 7, 2019, deadline for comments on the draft report. — Tom Leithauser, tom.leithauser@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily

Colorado Authority Seeks Reconsideration of Interoperability Order

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The Boulder, Colo., Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority (BRETSA) has filed a petition for reconsideration of an order (TR Daily, Oct. 23) released by the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau in October that dismissed as premature a request by the Colorado Public Safety Broadband Governing Body (CPSBGB) asking that the Commission clarify guidelines and requirements concerning interoperability and roaming between the nationwide public safety broadband network being built by AT&T, Inc., for the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) and wireless carriers (TR Daily, July 9).

The order adopted Oct. 23 in PS dockets 16-269, 12-94, and 06-229, and WT docket 06-150 noted that the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology subsequently asked the FCC not to take any action at this time on the CPSBGB’s filing (TR Daily, July 16). “In light of our dismissal of the Request, we also find the filings by other parties supporting the Request to be moot,” the order said. “If other parties have concerns that they believe warrant Commission action, they may petition accordingly.” Continue reading →

Andy Seybold’s Public Safety Advocate, November 29, 2018

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Presentations and Awards. On Tuesday the week before Thanksgiving, I flew to Denver to speak at a FirstNet Association (FNA) event and on Wednesday I flew home. Then on Thursday, I started out on what became a two-day trek to New York City due to weather delays. When I finally arrived in NYC, it was late on Friday so I was only able to join the Radio Club of America (RCA) board of directors meeting for the last thirty minutes. This was my last board meeting and I regret I could not have been there for the entire meeting but stormy weather and flying don’t often go well together.

FirstNet Association (FNA). The presentation I gave for attendees who came to hear the latest about FirstNet focused on coverage and the PowerPoint slides can be found here. The first slide set the level of expectations versus today’s progress. It shows that at present we are in month twenty of the contract between AT&T and FirstNet the Authority and outlined RFP-stated FirstNet milestones that would have to be met for the bidder to be compliant and on-track for building the network. When the RFP was developed, conventional wisdom was that a bidder would win the contract and deploy Band 14 (20 MHz of spectrum) for public safety over a five-year period.

Instead, when AT&T was awarded the contract, it provided public safety with full access to all AT&T LTE spectrum along with a plan to add Band 14 to its sites. The slide for month twenty states that at the end of twenty-four months of contract, “Achievement of 60% of contractor’s proposed Band 14 coverage in non-rural areas” should be complete. While only 60-percent of non-rural areas are required to be covered by Band 14 now, the FirstNet (Built with AT&T) footprint is much broader. Read the Entire Post Here. Continue reading →

Andy Seybold’s Public Safety Advocate, November 11, 2018

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Critical LTE Communications Forum and More.  This week’s Advocate is late since I attended and took part in the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) Critical LTE Communications Forum. There were about 200 folks in attendance, all with a keen interest in broadband communications for public safety. The sessions were great for the most part but there were occasional topics where some speakers presented information or ideas that were simply wrong or conveyed advances as coming much faster than they actually will.

For some reason, neither FirstNet (Built by AT&T) nor the FirstNet Authority had any sponsorship or participation. However, there were FirstNet folks in the audience. This lack of FirstNet visibility allowed the first keynote by Verizon to contain comments that could have and should have been countered by FirstNet. These issues included sharing networks, how soon Verizon’s Mission-Critical Push-To-Talk (PTT) would come to its network, and then a plea for states to include a statement in their policy that would make it mandatory for full network interoperability.

Verizon’s take on Mission-Critical Push-To-Talk was that it would roll it out in 2019. Then, in the same sentence, stated this would soon be followed by off-network LTE or Proximity Services (ProSe). Neither of these statements is based on actual fact and later in the day during the PTT panel (see below), I finally heard that the first iteration of Mission-Critical PTT was nothing more than a first-generation product and it would be years before all the kinks had been worked out.
Read the Entire Post Here .

Here are the articles I have selected with the help of Discovery Patterns artificial intelligence

Fiber forward: FCC awards waiver for county broadband project Continue reading →

Andy Seybold’s Public Safety Advocate, November 1, 2018

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LMR, FirstNet, WiFi, Just to be Clear, and More. Last week’s Advocate discussed the integration, over time, of NG9-1-1, FirstNet, Land Mobile Radio (LMR), and WiFi into a homogenous communications system for public safety. Before last week, I had written multiple Advocates about LMR and FirstNet working hand-in-hand and in recent months I have been promoting a way to integrate FirstNet, LMR, and WiFi into a solid, interactive communications platform for all of the public safety community.

It was, therefore, a shock to me to read a response to last week’s Advocate from a gentleman I have conversed with and met on several occasions. The response to my columns is moderated on AllThingsFirstNet.com but I have never chosen to not accept any comment, good or bad, as that goes with the territory.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, after I approved the comment for inclusion at the bottom of the Advocate and typed in my response, the site went down. The web folks were able to save a copy of the comment and my response, which is directly below:

“Welcome back Andy, I have been a little disappointed in the past few articles since they have been focused on FirstNet and the possibilities making it seem like you were advocating to replace LMR today. I agree that the current radio will evolve to include data/text/video, but as you stated in todays article, it will be a while until all the pieces fit together.”

My response: “First of all thank you for the comment but I am horrified that anyone reading my Advocate would believe that I am about replacing LMR with FirstNet, I think you will find that I have always stated that LMR is a vital and important part of overall public safety communications. I have been very vocal in my call for LMR to LTE PTT solutions and I have, I thought been very clear about the fact that LMR is a vital portion of the public safety communications picture and will be for many, many Years. Best regards, Andy”

The comments he made indicated that even though he was a long-time reader he apparently thought that in a number of my articles I was making a case for FirstNet as the only network for public safety. This is what surprised me. I have, for many, many years, said that FirstNet and LMR (and WiFi) will work in concert with each other and that LMR has a long life left within the public safety community. In the most recent hurricanes, both LMR and FirstNet were up and running and where one was not, the other was. So, to be very clear, my vision of public safety going forward is robust and up-to-date NG9-1-1 systems, LMR, FirstNet, and WiFi where available. I believe this will provide the best of all worlds.
Read the Entire Post Here . Continue reading →

Pai Names BDAC Disaster Recovery Working Group Members

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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today named the members of the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee’s new disaster response and recovery working group, which he established in July when he added disaster response and recovery issues to the BDAC’s portfolio (TR Daily, July 27).

The working group will be chaired by Red Grasso, the FirstNet state point of contact for North Carolina, who works for the N.C. Department of Information Technology, according to a public notice released today in GN docket 17-83.  Jonathan Adelstein, president and chief executive officer of the Wireless Infrastructure Association, who is also a member of the full BDAC, will be the working group’s vice chair.

The group’s members cover a range of industry players as well as a variety of local, state, territorial, and tribal governments and associations, including the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, the Georgia Municipal Association, the National Emergency Management Association, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, the Puerto Rico Public Service Regulatory Board, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the city of Dallas, and the town of Germantown, Tenn.

The working group “is charged with recommending measures that can be taken to improve the resiliency of broadband infrastructure before a disaster occurs, as well as actions that can be taken to more quickly restore broadband infrastructure following a disaster.  Following what he heard on the ground in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, the Chairman has also charged the working group with developing best practices for coordination among wireless providers, backhaul providers, and power companies during and after a disaster,” according to the Chairman’s announcement. Continue reading →

Local Governments Urge FCC to Stay Order on Deployment Barriers

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The National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, and the National Association of Regional Councils, the National Association of Towns and Townships, and more than 60 state and regional level municipal associations and individual cities, towns, and counties have asked the FCC to stay the third report and order the FCC adopted in August in its proceeding on removing barriers to broadband infrastructure investment, which, they noted, is due to take effect Jan. 14, 2019.

The local government interests object to the order’s restrictions on what they can charge for use of their right-of-way, its adoption of a federal standard regarding the aesthetics of wireless infrastructure, and its redefinition of what constitutes an “effective prohibition” of deployment, which the Communications Act authorizes the FCC to preempt.

With regard to the interpretation of the phrase “effective prohibition” as used in sections 253 and 332 of the Communications Act, the order adopted in August in WT docket 17-79 and WC docket 17-84 “explicitly rejects the ‘significant gap’ and ‘least intrusive alternative’ tests that had been adopted and applied (with small variations) by almost every U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and incorporated into local ordinances over the last 20 years. The Order, in contravention of a key holding in [the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in] ‘National Cable & Telecommunications Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Services,’ also rejects the ‘plain language’ interpretations of those sections adopted by the Eighth and Ninth Circuits, both of which found that an effective prohibition requires the litigant to prove that a challenged action actually prohibits provision of a protected service. The Commission instead adopted a standard that presumes a prohibition where costs of deployment are increased (on the theory that providers might offer additional services if they were richer); and that concludes that service is ‘prohibited’ if an entity is prevented from ‘improving’ service,” the local government parties said. Continue reading →