States Cautioned About Opt-Outs as FirstNet Readies Plans

FirstNet plans to distribute draft state plans mid-June for a 45-day review period, then send final plans this fall, a FirstNet spokeswoman emailed Friday. Once FirstNet delivers final plans, governors will have 90 days to opt out, then 180 days to submit an alternative radio-access-network (RAN) plan for FCC and NTIA approval, under the statute that created FirstNet. Seeking to keep options open, several states issued requests for information or proposals on alternatives (see 1703310067). Wisconsin planned to release Friday an RFP for alternative plans, with responses due July 11, emailed Wisconsin Public Safety Broadband Interoperability Unit Supervisor James Klas.

“There’s no out for AT&T,” said the carrier's Senior Legal Counsel Stephanie Baldanzi. “We are bound to deliver and … we are confident that what we are going to deliver is going to be attractive to the states.” But AT&T wants every state to opt in and is working hard to accomplish that, Baldanzi said. AT&T has been in the telecom business for more than a century, she said: “This is what we do. If not us, then who?”

FirstNet wants states to feel the public safety network is built “for them and with them,” not being done “to them,” FirstNet Chief Counsel Jason Karp said. He responded to earlier comments by ACT|The App Association President Morgan Reed, who urged FirstNet to learn from the healthcare sector, where physicians resisted electronic health records because they weren’t engaged in development. “The rollout of FirstNet applications has to be done with first responders and not to them, because if it’s not, the adoption rate will be terrible and first responders will continue to hack the system using publicly available applications on their smart devices.”

Opting out means taking on operational, financial and technical responsibilities to build, deploy, maintain and upgrade their state RAN for the network’s life, Karp said. “It’s a big undertaking.” States should know that building an LTE RAN is much more complicated than land mobile radio, cautioned NTIA Public Safety Communications Associate Administrator Marsha MacBride. After getting FCC OK on alternative plans, states must apply to NTIA to lease spectrum and for RAN construction grant funding. If an opt-out state or its partner knows how to run an LTE network, “they will get through the process at NTIA,” she said. “If they don’t, they won’t.”

Opting out is complex because that's how Congress wanted it, said Cohen, who helped draft that legislation when he was a counsel for the House Commerce Committee: “The process is on purpose unforgiving.” The law allows for no amendments or second chances to state alternative plans if rejected by the FCC or NTIA, he said. The state opt-out process itself was a late addition to the 2012 law establishing FirstNet during final negotiations that Cohen attended, he said. “Some things got a little confused, and the opt-out provision was one of them,” he said. “Congress clearly discouraged [opting out]. They put it in, but … it’s not easy.” That’s because the “original vision” was a “nationwide approach,” he said.

States that go with AT&T can get coverage one day after opting in on the carrier’s existing network, said FirstNet Chief Technology Officer Jeff Bratcher. “Pre-emption will follow on the commercial LTE bands by the end of the calendar year,” he said. “We’ll have public safety on a dedicated network much quicker than waiting for the Band 14 buildout.”

Karp acknowledged “a lot of mystery” about FirstNet processes to outside observers and said he wasn’t surprised when Rivada Mercury challenged the selection of AT&T. FirstNet won in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, but the case was mostly closed to the public and the independent authority refused to publicly release AT&T contract documents (see 1703290047). FirstNet officials worked nights and weekends evaluating proposals, said Karp, and AT&T wasn’t “predetermined” to win: “Absolutely not in any way, shape or form.”