FirstNet's Attention Mostly Focused on Pending Request for Proposal, GM Says
Outreach and a pending request for proposal as FirstNet builds a network is dominating the time and attention of staff, acting General Manager TJ Kennedy told the FirstNet board Wednesday. “Almost everything else that we do in FirstNet supports these two efforts,” Kennedy said. The day after the release of a Commerce Department Inspector General report on irregularities at FirstNet (see 1412090043), the board met Wednesday, with members stressing the progress that has been made so far by the authority, established by the 2012 spectrum law.
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Kennedy said he's encouraged by the high totals of provisionally winning bids in the FCC’s AWS-3 auction. While bidding in the auction has slowed, it topped $43 billion Wednesday. There has been “lots of vigorous bidding,” said Kennedy. The results “give us great confidence that we’re now going to be funded for our initial $7 billion worth of funding,” he said.
FirstNet is pleased with responses to a recent request for information, preliminary to an RFP, Kennedy said. The responses are confidential. Eighty-three of the 122 responses came from industry, he said. “We definitely feel we received enough responses and enough valid, very strong responses that we’re going to have good competition.” Small and large carriers and vendors responded to the RFI, he said. FirstNet plans a series of “industry days” next year to update vendors and carriers on the latest thinking at FirstNet, Kennedy said.
FirstNet is reaching out to the states, with initial consultation meetings already held in eight states and 25 more in the works, Kennedy said. The ninth is slated for Florida later this week, a spokesman said. “States are very, very different,” Kennedy said. “A lot of good work is being done here.” All of the states have seen some big incidents in recent years, from mall shootings to mudslides and bridge collapses, he said. States “know what works and didn’t work for communications,” he said.
Coverage has been brought up as a big issue at every meeting, especially for rural and tribal areas, Kennedy said. Local officials are also concerned about the affordability of the network, coordination with federal agencies, cybersecurity and how the network will be structured, including priorities and the amount of bandwidth, he said.
FirstNet also said Jeff Johnson, a retired fire chief and board member, has been named vice chairman. Johnson said at this point FirstNet’s message must be vague. “Until we have an RFP award and we have a partner and we have an offering, we really don’t have a lot of specificity" to offer, he said. “We can get in the ballpark, but we cannot be profoundly specific.”