Verizon Sees Its Public Safety Network as Offering First Responders Options, NPSTC Told

Don Brittingham, Verizon vice president-public safety policy, said he has gotten many questions since the carrier announced its plans in August (see 1708170040). Verizon views the FirstNet contract with AT&T as a business arrangement, in which AT&T agreed to build out the authority’s 700 MHz spectrum, Brittingham said. “Verizon never had any interest in the spectrum.”

“Our focus here is … complementary to FirstNet,” Brittingham said. “We don’t view FirstNet as a competitor. We view them as a program that we want to be able to support.” Verizon will offer devices that also operate on band 14, the FirstNet band, he said. Verizon’s public safety customers sometimes will have to roam on the FirstNet network and will have the capacity to do so, though the two carriers don’t now have a data roaming agreement, he said. “Roaming in the interest of public safety is different,” he said. “We’re open to that.” Verizon is also committed to interoperability, he said.

The company gets that public safety agencies want a network that meets the standards first responders have developed, Brittingham said. “We take that to heart,” he said. “We build our network, our products and services accordingly.” Verizon will be able to meet those demands, he said. The carrier doesn’t take its commitment to build a dedicated public safety network “lightly,” he said.

Verizon’s public safety offering doesn’t require states to opt out of FirstNet, access to FirstNet’s spectrum or federal funding, Brittingham said. “It’s based on the finances of Verizon and our capital program.” Verizon said at one time it couldn’t offer pre-emption to public safety, he said. “That was based on the company’s position at the time, but things changed.” With Verizon’s dedicated network, public safety will have choices, he said. “Competitive pressure will continue to drive innovation.”

“We are encouraged that they want to focus on interoperability with FirstNet and AT&T,” Ralph Haller, NPSTC governing board chair, told us. The public safety broadband network “was envisioned to be a nationwide interoperable network and that needs to remain its primary focus, regardless of how one accesses the network.”

“In general, I think competition is good for the consumer,” said NPSTC member Tom Sorley, who is with the city of Houston. “There has never been a mandate for any public safety agency to use FirstNet. In the end, both AT&T and Verizon must make a compelling case to persuade public safety to adopt their service.”

Chris Sambar, senior vice president-AT&T FirstNet, told NPSTC his company is “absolutely, 100 percent committed” to building a public-safety grade network. He termed as “fake news” rumors that AT&T isn’t interested in building out the FirstNet band. “Every new tower that we’re building in rural areas, and there are going to be many of those ... are all going to be at band 14,” he said: “We will be deploying band 14 broadly. It will be available to public safety and first responders” and included in new devices. AT&T also is committed to working with the states, Sambar said. “There’s a lot of dialogue,” he said. States “are very interested in how we’re building our network and they want to have input into that,” he said. Last week, one state gave AT&T a list of 600 locations it wanted to make sure had access to FirstNet, he said.

Public-safety grade is “a very broad and very vast term,” Sambar said. It starts with the device in the first responder’s hand and extends all the way to the central office, he said. “We’re building a fully … integrated network in a fully interoperable way.” Every tower won’t be equally fortified, he said. “It’s not reasonable to think that every single tower will be at the very same level,” but AT&T is focused on determining which facilities will be critical to FirstNet, he said.

Meanwhile, a FirstNet spokesman said that on Rivada’s partnership with U.S. Cellular, targeting a state network in New Hampshire (see 1709050070), the national network "looks forward to continuing to work with New Hampshire's public safety community to provide them … with the best Network plan possible for the state's first responders at no cost to the state's taxpayers.”

NPSTC Notebook

The FCC will prepare a report on Harvey, David Furth, deputy chief of the Public Safety Bureau, told NPSTC. “Every time we have a major hurricane, we will do an after-action analysis,” Furth said. “We’re very conscious of the impact that a hurricane like Harvey has … for weeks and potentially months to come.” The FCC is “very committed to doing everything that we can to provide the best information, to help communications providers, to help” public safety answering points, he said. The regulator is better positioned to help than it was before Katrina in 2005, Furth said. A lot of the work that began with Katrina “has gotten us to a better place, at least in terms of what we’re able to do, assist with both preparation and recovery, but we’re by no means satisfied,” he said. On FirstNet, Furth said commissioners have before them an order finalizing FCC rules for opting out of the network, addressing issues raised by FirstNet (see 1706220019). Action is likely in the next few weeks so states and territories know all rules before deciding whether sign up, he said. Furth predicted states that opt out will submit alternative plans to the FCC “about a year from now.”