Texas reviews federal plan for dedicated high-speed wireless network for emergency responders

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is reviewing whether the state should sign on to a new federal initiative aimed at giving police, firefighters and other first responders access to a dedicated high-speed wireless network.

Dallas-based AT&T is spending about $40 billion over the life of a 25-year agreement to build, operate and maintain The First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet, a dedicated high-speed, reliable wireless LTE (Long Term Evolution) network designed to allow first responders to send and receive information no matter how crowded, or rural, the location.

Right now, first responders use the same wireless networks as everyone else, which often drives them to rely on radios instead of cellphones, laptops or other wireless devices during events that might make networks congested, like sporting events or natural disasters. First responders also don’t always have cellphone coverage in rural areas.

“I just think it’s so important that we’re going to be able to provide this capability to public safety that allows them to leverage the same kind of tools that you and I may take for granted, you know, having a smartphone, having applications that help us do our job each day,” FirstNet President TJ Kennedy said.

FirstNet, an independent authority within the Department of Commerce, is providing 20 megahertz of spectrum to support the project and “success-based payments of $6.5 billion over the next five years to support the Network buildout,” according to a news release at the time.

State officials are reviewing the plan for Texas. FirstNet and AT&T announced June 19 that they were releasing customized state plans via an online portal to U.S. states and territories. Only three territories hadn’t yet received their plans as of Tuesday, Kennedy said, because they were still working with the team to address their needs.

About 80 percent to 85 percent of the content across all the state plans is the same, but what is unique is the coverage plan for each state, Chris Sambar, senior vice president of AT&T FirstNet, said in a joint phone interview with Kennedy.

“You think about Texas, the governor, I know, has an interest in covering rural areas, covering schools, covering the border areas, helping Customs and Border Patrol and the local authorities there,” Sambar said. “So those are all the unique things that Texas is looking for. We’ve been engaged in conversations with them, and we’re in the process of satisfying, we believe, all of the concerns that they have and all of the desires that they have, for the most part.”

Texas is interested in better covering areas around schools because those are often used as evacuation centers, Kennedy said.

On June 19, officials were told that they would have 45 days to review their state plans and give feedback. Then an official 90-day clock starts ticking for all state leaders, and Abbott has to decide whether Texas will “opt in.”

Public safety professionals across the state, the Department of Public Safety and the governor’s office are reviewing the FirstNet state plan, Todd Early, Texas’ statewide interoperability coordinator, said via email. Early is the point of contact for Texas with FirstNet.

The governor’s office will make the decision to opt in or out, Early said, adding via email Thursday that no decisions have been made. A few states have issued requests for proposals to keep their options open, but Early wrote Thursday that Texas had not issued any RFPs.

“This 45-day period is where the — in Texas we’d call it horse trading — is going to happen,” said Tom Sorley, deputy chief information officer of public safety for the city of Houston. “I think that the state, the group will look at it and they’ll have concerns in certain areas and they’ll make comments, push back, negotiate, if you will, with FirstNet and AT&T to try to get the plan closer to what they want it to be before it goes to the governor. So that’s exactly, in my opinion, what the 45 days is for.”

The most-often voiced concern about FirstNet, Sorley said, is about coverage.

“Many of the states, including Texas, have an awful lot of rural areas that don’t have coverage now,” Sorley said. “And they’re not going to have coverage on day one of this plan either. You know it’s a 25-year contract, but … the first five years is where they’re going to do a lot of the building. And so I think that’s where you’re going to see most of a) the concern and b) the negotiation happen.”

If Abbott opts in, AT&T will be responsible for building, maintaining and upgrading the network for the state for the next 25 years. But if Abbott chooses for Texas to opt out, that does not mean the Lone Star State would be off the hook.

Governors who opt out commit their state to building an equivalent network and maintaining it for 25 years. And that network still has to be interoperable with FirstNet.

“It’s a little early in the process to know one way or the other,” Sorley said about whether Abbott will opt in.

Sorley also chairs the Public Safety Advisory Committee, a group that represents public safety and government groups nationwide in FirstNet discussions, offering its expertise and guidance to the planning process.

“From my perspective, I think it would be very challenging for the state of Texas to take on the responsibility of building and operating our own, what’s called a radio access network, or a RAN, because it’s a 25-year commitment, and it would take an inordinate amount of resources to do that,” Sorley said. “If I were the governor, I would have a hard time committing the state to that long-term obligation.”

If states opt in, they don’t have to pay for the building of the network, or for maintaining or upgrading it for the length of that 25-year-contract, Kennedy said, and states would pay only the service fees through the FirstNet offering, such as those that consumers pay for cellphone service.

“We do have LTE, but it’s not prioritized,” said Anthony Trevino, assistant chief of the San Antonio Police Department. “And so this will create a public safety broadband that has priority communications so during critical incidents, things of that nature, officers will still be able to communicate critical information to each other via this broadband network.”

Trevino said that during crowded events such as the Alamo Bowl, for example, it would be helpful to be able to text officers pictures or other information on a suspect, instead of having to rely on verbal descriptions by radio.

“If we try to send anything out, we just fall in queues like everybody else, and so that really put us at a disadvantage when it comes to being able to use broadband technology as a force multiplier in fighting crime,” Trevino said.

The lack of a dedicated network for first responders could also be a problem in the event of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

“Let’s say, heaven forbid, if there was a terrorist event, any cellphone communications would basically be useless because the LTE network would be inundated with traffic and calls, and things of that nature,” Trevino said. “We couldn’t utilize that. We’d have to solely depend on police radios to be able to communicate.”

Many discussions went into preparing the Texas plan, and the data that FirstNet and AT&T received from the state “covered thousands and thousands and thousands of public safety agencies, putting in their input,” Kennedy said.

“Todd (Early) and the team have invited us down,” Kennedy said. “I’ve literally been on the border, in aircraft as well as in boats, you know, looking at the needs and requirements of the Texas Department of Public Safety and local public safety providers on the border. They’ve done a really great job of making sure we understand … the rural Texas needs as well as the different metro areas across the state.”