Verizon, AT&T at Odds on Need for Revised FirstNet Interoperability Rules
Verizon and AT&T clashed on whether the FCC should consider rules to guarantee interoperability as a fundamental responsibility of FirstNet. Comments appeared through Friday (see 1909110062) in docket 19-254 on Colorado's Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority (BRETSA) petitions for declaratory ruling or rulemaking. AT&T won a contract to build FirstNet, and Verizon pursues public safety customers for its own network (see 1808140036).
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BRETSA raised “legitimate questions,” Verizon said. The carrier favors a declaratory ruling: “First responders and other public safety entities need that interoperability now, and it poses real-world implications ... during an emergency." The system's approach restricts interoperability to “FirstNet customers communicating on the FirstNet network,” Verizon said: “Restricting users’ ability to use critical features and capabilities on a single network provides public safety users with proprietary ‘intraoperability,’ not true interoperability.”
BRETSA similarly questioned restrictions. “The raison d'etre for FirstNet is the adverse impacts on First Responder communications and emergency response when public safety radio systems provide only limited interoperability on specific channels; which was brought home ... through 9/11,” the Boulder authority said.
AT&T said BRETSA seeks rules beyond Spectrum Act requirements. “Mandating the ‘full Interoperability’ and roaming capabilities BRETSA seeks is unnecessary, unworkable, and unwise,” the company said. The FirstNet network “has been designed, built, and operated to be ‘interoperable’ as Congress intended,” AT&T said. It's “available to all public safety entities and first responders, who have the option to subscribe,” the company said: The “'single, national network architecture’ promotes key communication capabilities between public safety entities that subscribe.”
“Contrary to what BRETSA suggests,” the Spectrum Act “neither mandates nor contemplates any requirement" the network be interoperable with or its core connect to "separate commercial or other third-party networks,” FirstNet said, via NTIA: “The BRETSA Petitions provide no basis for the sweeping and unprecedented relief they seek because there is none.”
Southern Linc and C Spire sided with the petitioner. “Interoperability is not a simple matter of using the same LTE air interface as commercial operators,” the smaller carriers wrote: “Without detailed guidance about precisely how to interconnect networks, route traffic and perform other essential network functions, FirstNet will not -- and cannot -- interoperate with the wide array of communications platforms public safety officials use.”