Projects Remain Suspended Two Months Later; Equipment in Warehouses

Two solutions may be possible, said Bill Schrier, former chair of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) Operator Advisory Committee and ex-chief technology officer of Seattle. Once the FirstNet board is appointed in August, these advanced BTOP grantees could resume their work and act as “pilot implementations to demonstrate how these networks could work,” similar to how Verizon and AT&T have created pilot networks in certain cities, he said. “NTIA should follow that commercial model.” A second solution, not mutually exclusive, would be to “go to the vendors” and place the burden on them to synchronize with FirstNet, Schrier said. “My biggest concern is that this has to be a partnership” among the states, the governors, EMS officials and NTIA, Schrier told us. He said he sees a lot of good intentions among the different parties and is sympathetic to the concerns about stranded investments and halted projects, especially on the part of local officials who “put a lot of their political capital in these projects."

Chuck Robinson never expected the federal government to stop Charlotte, N.C.’s, public safety broadband network in its tracks. His city began receiving $16.7 million in BTOP stimulus grant money in 2010 to create CharMeck Connect, an interoperable wireless broadband network on the 700 MHz spectrum devoted to public safety. In February, the U.S. government announced its own plans to craft FirstNet, part of spectrum legislation that became law that month. NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling called the Charlotte team on April 3 about his concern. “They requested that we slow down,” said Robinson, a Charlotte business executive reporting to the city’s government and responsible for overseeing the planned CharMeck Connect network. Robinson referred to all the vendors, the timelines and plans, and said slowing down seemed like “a very, very tough thing to do” at the time.

NTIA “paused these projects in order to protect taxpayer funds and avoid investments that would need to be replaced if incompatible with the nationwide network,” Strickling told us through a press aide. “Our goals are for the funding to stay in the communities where the grants were awarded and for the projects to proceed in a fiscally prudent manner that supports the nationwide network. We are working closely with our grantees on how best their projects can move forward to meet public safety needs in this changed environment.” NTIA said that, while it lacks any timetable for addressing these grants, it’s working closely with those affected and has requested the Office of Management and Budget extend the completion deadline for the seven BTOP grantees.

"We were very excited about it, we were on track,” Robinson said. On May 11 came the letter from Strickling (CD May 14 p9) informing Robinson that he recommended the project be “partially suspended” because “the new [FirstNet] law dramatically changes the assumptions on which we awarded the public safety grants in 2010” and the public safety projects should continue in “fiscally prudent” ways (http://xrl.us/bnfrpa). Now, all the equipment for Charlotte’s public safety network is in warehouses and no plans have been decided on to remove the suspension, Robinson said. The project, as of the latest quarterly report to the NTIA (http://xrl.us/bnfrqw), had spent $4.09 million worth of BTOP money. He described his reaction as “more than a little disappointed."

"June 26 we were supposed to go live,” Robinson said. Excitement had begun to grow around CharMeck Connect in anticipation of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, slated for Charlotte in September. “That’s all off the table now,” Robinson said: Even if the project is reactivated, it would never be ready by then due to the time needed for deployment and tests. There are now no plans to move the project forward, and money is still going to pay for warehouse costs and leases on towers. The equipment remains, so none of the grant money has been “lost” in that sense, Robinson said. There would be challenges if the project were reactivated now, he said, such as whether it would be able to retain the team of people assembled for the project, and there’s a risk of “losing some of the space we had reserved” among commercial towers, he said. The towers operate on a first-come, first-served basis, amounting to 75 percent of the tower sites planned for Charlotte’s network, he said. “Charlotte would have been a great test bed for FirstNet,” Robinson said, and there would be “a lot to learn.” He said the city had planned for a hosted core to the network, which was “uniquely different” and underscored the awareness the city had that it “would have to fold into a national or state model at some point.” The government hadn’t needed to stop Charlotte completely, Robinson said, as he described ways the city could have launched its public safety network beneficially as FirstNet prepared to launch nationally -- a prospect Robinson said “is probably four years out.”

Patience is the critical virtue for these people and projects, said Jeff Johnson, chairman of the Oregon State Interoperability Council. “I understand the frustration of the BTOP recipients,” he said. “But let’s not get in a rush here. ... We have to be patient. NTIA is giving us all the answers they can.” Johnson said he expects the agency will be able to provide more answers in once the FirstNet board is established next month, as required by February’s spectrum law. In the meantime, NTIA’s decision to halt these programs is “very rational and defensible” and the focus should be on “money that rolls forward into the new network,” he said. Johnson has advocated on and dealt with these issues for the past decade, and emphasizes that these individual projects were undertaken with the expectation that these networks would eventually fit into a nationwide system.

Another concern is the FCC, expected in a draft order to terminate its 20 existing 700 MHz waivers and 36 pending requests, with an option for systems such as Charlotte and Harris County, Texas, to reapply for permission to continue their construction (CD July 13 p1). It’s hard to judge much and make any comments before the FCC acts, said a spokesman for Motorola Solutions, responsible for San Francisco BTOP grant work as part of the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications System (BayRICS). NTIA has “received verbal assurances that the request” to OMB for a two-year extension of Motorola’s BTOP grant “will be granted and is awaiting written confirmation,” BayRICS Interim General Manager Barry Fraser wrote in a July 12 report (http://xrl.us/bnhbmn). BayRICS recommended in June comments (http://xrl.us/bnhbwt) to NTIA that early LTE builders and waiver recipients “should lead these [FirstNet] efforts and be expected to contribute their best practices."

Mississippi faces a situation similar to Charlotte and wants to continue its projects. The state called its Mississippi Wireless Information Network, P-25 Land Mobile Radio network and the LTE network “nearly complete” at the time NTIA suspended its efforts May 11. The state “has done a great deal of planning and deployment through its BTOP grant,” said June 15 comments submitted to NTIA (http://xrl.us/bnf49h). Mississippi said since FirstNet will take “at least two years or more” to get running, NTIA should “shift its position to promote compatible deployments and regional development” in a way that fits with FirstNet’s plans and that it could develop its network “seamlessly and without any adverse effect on governance or interoperability.” If the federal government doesn’t reignite Mississippi’s project, “NTIA should be held responsible for under-funding of the network and/or face other legal ramifications” and it would be “a waste of federal and Mississippi tax dollars which is a detriment to job creation in Mississippi and an injury to the safety of its citizens,” the state said. Mississippi was allocated more than $70 million in BTOP funds to develop its Mississippi Education, Safety and Health Network and according to its latest quarterly report (http://xrl.us/bnf6b5) had invested more than $30 million already and was in the process of testing its LTE core.

Mississippi Wireless Communication Commission Executive Officer Vicki Helfrich doesn’t see the suspensions as saving taxpayer dollars. “The suspension probably made that concern more of a reality,” she told us. “Right now we can’t move forward.” She described the BTOP grant as “stranded investment” that raises a lot of “unknowns” for those in Mississippi. “This is more of a hindrance than helping long-term,” she said. “We've put a lot of money into this and a lot of resources.” Before May 11, the Mississippi work was “on target,” Helfrich said: Now there’s “equipment sitting on towers” and “contractual obligations as well” that are in limbo. She said it’s hard to develop a business plan with so much up in the air. Considering how these projects were suspended and how FirstNet is moving forward, Schrier hopes local relationships won’t be damaged, he said. “Every situation’s a little bit different.”