Ginn Named to Chair FirstNet Board

The chairman is Samuel Ginn, a longtime telecom executive. The other members are New York Police Department Deputy Chief Charles Dowd; Storey County, Iowa, Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald; Western Fire Chiefs Association CEO Jeffrey Johnson; North East Mobile Health Services Chief Kevin McGinnis; Teresa Takai of the Department of Defense; former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb; National Rural Telecom Cooperative CEO Tim Bryan; Kodiak Networks co-founder F. Craig Farrill; former CEO of the Asia Region of Vodafone Bill Keever; former CEO of Sage Software Susan Swenson; and former President-Network Operations for Cingular Wireless Ed Reynolds. The three standing members of the board are the U.S. attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget. The board members were appointed to terms of one-to-three years. The board itself was approved to run 15 years, by the February spectrum law that set aside funding for a national public safety network in the 700 MHz band (http://xrl.us/bnmjg8). The legislation required the Commerce Department to name the board no later than Monday.

Ginn, former Vodafone Airtouch chairman, instantly emerges as a key public safety player with his appointment as chairman, public safety officials said Monday. He exited his role at Vodafone when it merged with Verizon in 2000 to form Verizon Wireless. Ginn is also a former AT&T executive who spent 27 years at the company, culminating as vice president-network operations for AT&T Long Lines.

None of the appointees was active in the push to launch early networks in the 700 MHz bands under FCC waivers. None come from Charlotte, N.C., or Harris County, Texas, the two areas closest to starting a local network. A few of the appointees, Dowd and Johnson in particular, are well known in public safety circles, officials said. One said Takai was the biggest surprise, but was an excellent choice given her experience. Takai has been a critical spectrum player as chief information officer at the Department of Defense, but was appointed based on her service as chief information officer in both Michigan and California.

"The FirstNet board will be responsible for designing, developing, operating and maintaining that long overdue nationwide public safety broadband network,” Blank said. “They were not so easy to choose, particularly given the wealth of worthy candidates who were recommended to us. ... It was also a jigsaw puzzle given the requirements that the FirstNet board reflect a broad array of backgrounds, ranging from people with firsthand experience as public safety professionals, to experts in areas such as networks technology an finance, to people representing the collected interests of states and localities from both urban and rural areas.” NTIA received more than 100 nominations for the 12 seats, she said.

"I think the makeup is fantastic,” APCO President Gregg Riddle told us. He encouraged the new board to “get moving -- they've got a lot of work to do.” For APCO, the most important consideration is overcoming the technical, installation and implementation challenges that will come trying to provide interoperability across the country, he said. “They've got to have something that’s designed to operate in today’s environment with today’s technology, and look to the future for expansion and upgrades. Because technology today is ever-changing, because there’s improvements, new technologies, new devices that come out, so they've got to build something that we can work with today, but look towards tomorrow."

National Emergency Number Association CEO Brian Fontes is “very pleased” with the new board, which does a great job representing the commercial industry side, with members who have “phenomenal experience in wireless, and building networks,” he said. “The chairman, Sam Ginn, is almost a historic figure in terms of his accomplishments in wireless.” Fontes said the public safety side was “fairly well-represented,” and that he was “very happy and amazed that they were able to get Teri Takai. ... She’s a pretty well accomplished person and I'm glad they brought in somebody with CIO background because so many of the states now are moving a lot of their telecommunication infrastructure under the CIO’s office."

Fontes said the board will need to take advantage of commercial systems already in place, to drive down costs for the FirstNet network. Standalone, one-off technology has proven to be very costly, he said, and the FirstNet board is an optimal position to leverage the commercial research, development and infrastructure in investment that’s going on. The public safety radio technology deployed today was built and designed for a communications system limited to public safety uses, he said. “And now in a broadband world, much of those radio services will probably be applications on a broadband network five or ten years from now.” It will be “critically important to make it seamless from the consumer, that has 21st century technology at their fingertips, right through to the 911 center, and right on to those who will respond to the incident,” he said. “We're there to help."

Rick Galway, the most recent president of NENA, urged the FirstNet board “not to forget the small people.” Small municipalities “need representation, because they don’t have the tax base, they don’t have the funding to do the upgrades that the next generation of the FirstNet project’s going to demand,” he said. FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky said he didn’t know who would be selected until he heard the announcement along with everyone else. It was a “very impressive” group, he told us during the Q&A session at the APCO’s FCC panel Monday.

The appointments got mostly glowing reviews, though the NGA was not pleased that current state officials were left off the board, the group said in a statement. “Given the role governors and states will play in making the public safety network a reality, it is imperative that state perspectives and priorities are well-represented,” NGA said. Correspondingly, the Conference of Mayors praised the administration for including Webb and Dowd. “The Conference of Mayors has always been committed to making sure that mayors’ interests and concerns are well represented in the federal government,” said Executive Director Tom Cochran. “Webb was a great Mayor of Denver and a great President of The U.S. Conference of Mayors. He will be a great member of the FirstNet Board.” Cochran called Dowd “one of the nation’s foremost experts in first-responder communications."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was pleased that Dowd was named to the board. “In New York City, we've worked to make interoperability of emergency communications a reality and we now have seamless, advanced response-level emergency communications between police, fire and other emergency personnel,” Bloomberg said. “But our efforts have been limited to the local level and the program will provide first responders across the country with the ability to communicate directly, share information, and coordinate a fast, effective response to any kind of public emergency. The need for local agencies to control the deployment of those technologies throughout the country will be an integral part of the new system."

"I am especially pleased that public safety is so well represented on the FirstNet Board,” said House Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Ginn’s “network and management experience will be invaluable to FirstNet as it begins building a truly nationwide, interoperable wireless broadband communications network designed to connect our nation’s first responders during emergencies,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.