Feds And First Responders Create Public Safety LTE Network
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Your government IT clients in public safety can benefit from a new partnership between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) and First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet). First responders’ ability to communicate during a disaster will be supported by the nation’s first interoperable public safety broadband network, according to Fed Tech Magazine.
Operating on the nationwide 700-megahertz spectrum, the network will be built with LTE wireless technology and will allow first responders from all levels to gain a “unified view of a situation as it unfold, sharing data, images, video, and voice communications.”
FirstNet spokesman Ryan Oremland called it “the Internet for public safety.” And Oremland explains, “With federal coordination, we’ve been careful not to create something that already exists. Instead of building everything, we’re leveraging.”
FirstNet will serve emergency responders across the country at the federal, state and local levels. Development and sustainment of the network will come from user fees, spectrum auctions, and leasing agreements, with those outside the public-safety community to pay for and use the network’s excess capacity.
“The key to making it (user fees) low is keeping cost down in building and keeping operational capabilities and leveraging of excess capacity of [the] network up, Kennedy said.
A major incentive for keeping costs low is to attract public-safety organizations to opt into using FirstNet; they are not required to use the network.
According to its website, FirstNet has conducted 15 initial state consultation meetings in the states and in Puerto Rico — with more than 1,000 stakeholders combined in attendance. FirstNet’s on-site consultation teams have been capturing the key points of discussion from the consultation meetings in coordination with the states. A regularly updated master tracker of state and territorial activities is available here.
In the “How FirstNet Can Help EMS Provide Better Patient Care” webinar, FirstNet experts discussed why FirstNet’s effort to build a public safety broadband network is important to EMS systems across the nation. The presentation highlighted potential benefits of the network, including accessing and sharing patient information in addition to real-time monitoring of vitals, both of which have the potential to help EMS providers make better treatment, field, and operational decisions. It also addressed how and why EMS should be involved in the planning and implementation of the network development.
FirstNet also will be holding a short course as part of the IWCE Connecting and Educating the Communications Technology Industry Conference in Las Vegas on March 19, highlighting the implementation challenges and ways to co-exist, collaborate, and interface with existing LMR (land mobile radio) systems to enable the interoperable network for public safety.
FirstNet was established by the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 to create a nationwide public safety broadband network as an independent authority within the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The legislation that established FirstNet allocated $7 billion for the network through the Federal Communication Commission’s wireless spectrum license auction, held in November 2014.
FirstNet’s 15-member board includes the secretary of Homeland Security, the attorney general, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and 12 other members with expertise in public safety, broadband and telecommunications networks from both the private sector and government.