FirstNet Officials Make Business Case for Investing in Network
FirstNet won’t be a success without industry buy-in, CEO Michael Poth told the group’s second “industry day” Thursday. Poth told a packed auditorium in Reston, Virginia, and more watching online, that FirstNet understands that industry needs to earn a “reasonable profit” through its involvement with the nascent public safety wireless network. Companies will need to balance the risks and rewards of participating in FirstNet, he said. Poth was named to the job from outside FirstNet last week (see 1508170033).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"The only way it’s going to be successful is as a true private, public, collaborative partnership,” Poth said. “This is a great opportunity … The reality is, this is a great business deal.” Poth also promised FirstNet is on target to release a final request for proposal (RFP) by the end of the year. Poth said FirstNet logged more than 800 responses to the draft RFP. “We will deliver a clean, concise RFP that’s going to give you a strategic overview,” he said. “We’re looking for honest, direct, continued feedback,” he said. “This is not lip service.”
Public safety buy-in is also critical, as is support from states and from other federal agencies, Poth said. “It’s critical for us that they participate and that they’re with us,” he said. “They’ve got us to the point where we are today.” Poth noted that the event was 10 years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and a few weeks before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “The technology was needed then, it’s needed now,” he said.
FirstNet also has to make sense for public safety agencies, President TJ Kennedy said. “We want to make sure that we have ways to incentivize public safety adoption, public safety use and that the incentives to deliver that network that does what public safety needs is first and foremost throughout a final RFP.” FirstNet stresses resiliency, reliability and security because that’s what public safety needs, he said.
FirstNet also understands that the network has to offer a viable business model, Kennedy said. The $7 billion in auction funds that will pay for the launch of FirstNet is a good start, but to be successful, the first responder authority needs to find ways to “leverage” the spectrum it controls, he said. “It’s spectrum that public safety will utilize to operate in. It gives them the ability to surge for large events,” he said. “But it’s also spectrum that we need to be able to lease [to others] to help fund the construction, maintenance and operation of the network.”
All indications are that data use on mobile networks will continue to expand at a rapid rate, Kennedy said. Other spectrum is coming online, he said, "but I think this is a unique opportunity” offering low-band “700 MHz spectrum. ... It’s certainly a way for folks to get access to similar spectrum from what’s been [offered] in recent auctions. ... The cost of the spectrum and the value of it are increasing.”
Kennedy said a dynamic market makes it difficult for FirstNet to put a value on the spectrum it controls. But he said the propagation characteristic of the 700 MHz spectrum makes it valuable for service providers in rural areas or concerned about in-building penetration. Unlike other spectrum sold by the FCC, the 700 MHz spectrum is already nearly clear of other users and there won't be a long lag time as there is between an auction and deployment, he said. “We plan to have cleared spectrum that is available to be used day one,” he said. “That’s an important element.”
FirstNet plans to use existing infrastructure for its network “in every which way that we can,” Kennedy said. FirstNet plans to initially use existing macro and other sites where it makes the most sense, to make use of existing backhaul and backup power, he said. But FirstNet also understands that there will be rural and border areas that will require “FirstNet-only” cell sites, he said.
FirstNet will charge safety agencies to use it, but wants to make those fees as “cost-effective as possible” and “very competitive,” Kennedy said. But most of the revenue is likely to come from covered leasing agreements from service providers which opt to use the spectrum, he said. In some cases, the network will use satellite backhaul, he said. “Not every part of this network will be a terrestrial network, but a huge portion of it certainly will be.” It's difficult for FirstNet to predict how many public safety users are likely to make use of a given cell site on a given day, he said.
Kennedy left session attendees with a question. “What would it take to get similar assets and have the ability to deploy wireless networks with and without FirstNet?” he asked. “The FirstNet opportunity is something that is quite attractive to industry.”
FirstNet has been busy. This week on its blog, it noted successful outreach meetings in Alabama and Tennessee and released a two-minute video blog on tribal data collection.