October 18, 2016–pdvWireless, Inc., said today that it has been informed that it is no longer in the running for the contract from the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) to build and maintain a nationwide public safety broadband network. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said that it received written notice yesterday from FirstNet’s contracting officer at the Interior Department that the bid it submitted to FirstNet on behalf of a consortium “is no longer being considered for the award.”

The company reiterated in its filing that it “was competing with a number of other bidders for the FirstNet award, including groups that had significantly more resources than the Company. The Company, however, determined that participating in the FirstNet bidding process was in the best interests of its stockholders because of a number of potential benefits to the Company, regardless of the outcome. These benefits include the ability to directly utilize the business, technical and other information developed for the FirstNet proposal in planning and preparing for the broadband facilities the Company plans to deploy, building valuable relationships with the wireless and technology companies who participated in the Company’s FirstNet consortium, and raising the Company’s profile within the wireless industry and the technology community.”

pdvWireless Chief Financial Officer Tim Gray declined to provide further comment on the company’s reaction to the development. “We’re a public company and people know we had bid, so we felt it was our duty to get the word out that we had received the notice from the contracting office,” Mr. Gray said told TRDaily this afternoon.

He was asked if pdvWireless would now disclose its partners in the proposal it submitted. “We’re still not going to disclose at the current time who our partners were as a part of our bid,” he replied. “But we’ll reevaluate when and if we can do that at a later point.”

pdvWireless was one of three entities known to have submitted a bid in response to FirstNet’s request for proposals. The others were AT&T, Inc., and Rivada Mercury, a consortium led by Rivada Networks LLC.

AT&T has made no recent filings with the SEC on its proposal and the company declined to comment on the status of its bid today, while Rivada, a private company, did not respond to requests for comment.

FirstNet has said it plans to award a contract by Nov. 1. “FirstNet is conducting an open, fair, and competitive procurement in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 15,” a FirstNet spokesman said today. “To that end, we are restricted from commenting on procurement sensitive information during an active procurement.” – Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily