FirstNet success means no hypothetical ‘shots’ need to be fired, Swenson says

As public-safety officials today commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the FirstNet Authority being created, the deployment of the FirstNet nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) has proceeded well enough that no one needs to face a firing squad, according to former Authority board Chair Sue Swenson.

“Save it for another time,” Swenson said during a recent interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications, noting that the initial five-year FirstNet buildout is expected to be finished this year. “I had forgotten that we can tell people that we don’t have to shoot them now.”

Of course, Swenson was joking—gunfire was never an actual threat. But it was Swenson who famously stated “we should be shot” if FirstNet was not completed as planned in 2022 while testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee almost seven years ago.

When the hearing was conducted, it had been three years since the FirstNet Authority was created as a much-overlooked piece of a massive tax-relief package and little tangible evidence of progress to the NPSBN, hence the title of the hearing: “Three years later: Are we any closer to a nationwide public-safety wireless broadband network?”

At the time, it was legitimate question.

A year before, the FirstNet Authority had unveiled a “roadmap” outlining the 40-plus steps that would need to be completed before a governor would be able to decide whether to have the FirstNet Authority deploy the NPSBN within the state or whether the state government would “opt out” and build out its portion of the network itself. The organization was beginning to establish a reputation of meeting its self-imposed deadlines, although it was still early in the process.

But for many who did not follow the FirstNet Authority closely, this progress was largely overshadowed by a high-profile allegations from FirstNet Authority board member Paul Fitzgerald in the spring of 2013, a lengthy dispute regarding Fitzgerald’s e-mails and issues cited by government watchdog organizations.

Meanwhile, if none of the negative issues existed, there was an ever-present funding question that simply wouldn’t go away. Congress only allocated $7 billion for the FirstNet Authority to build a self-sustainable NPSBN, and a government estimate determined that the FirstNet Authority would  need $12 billion to $47 billion in just the first 10 years. Industry analysts were more pessimistic, with some pegging the cost of building and maintaining a nationwide network between $60 billion to $100 billion.

The FirstNet Authority also held the license to 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum to support LTE operations, as well as the right to let a contractor leverage the airwaves to sell commercial services on a secondary basis.

Verizon had purchased a nearby 20 MHz block of frequencies—with no public-safety buildout obligations—for $4.74 billion in the FCC auction of 700 MHz spectrum in 2008. Since then, the economy had rebounded, as well as the spectrum market. Just weeks before, the FCC had completed the AWS-3 auction that generated $44.9 billion (generating revenue necessary to fully fund the $7 billion allocated to FirstNet).

Even with the encouraging AWS-3 auction, it was still uncertain whether the FirstNet airwaves would be enough to address the apparent funding gap, particularly with the value expected to be depressed by public-safety obligations. Would there only be enough money for FirstNet to serve parts of the U.S., as opposed to covering the entire nation?

Given these circumstances—and the overall history of large federal projects, which tend to miss timeline and/or exceed original budgets—many outside of the FirstNet Authority in early 2015 questioned whether the FirstNet was economically viable at all, much less whether the NPSBN would be finished by the statutory goal of 2022.

Delivering a drastic ultimatum (with a smile)

But Swenson expressed confidence that it could be done, adding a most unusual explanation point to the assertion.

More than an hour and a half into the March 2015 Senate hearing, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb) asked the question on everyone’s mind: “Do you think you’ll reach that 2022 goal that’s out there?”

Swenson replied, “Oh yeah. Yeah. If we don’t, I mean, we should be shot.” Swenson flashed a smile at the time (see photo above).

Seemingly a bit flustered, Fischer addressed committee chair Sen. John Thune, saying with a laugh, “Mr. Chairman, I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

Thune quipped, “We’ll find a lesser answer.”

Leaving a senator like Fischer speechless during a hearing is rare, but Swenson’s “we should be shot” statement had the desired effect.

“It got people’s attention, didn’t it?” Swenson said recently.

Swenson was smiling when she made the “we should be shot” ultimatum, but she was dead serious in her determination to take whatever steps were necessary to make the Congressional vision of an NPSBN—a nationwide broadband network dedicated to public safety that would be financially self-sustaining—a reality.

It was a message that was heard loud and clear by other key players in the FirstNet saga.

Jeff Johnson, who would serve as the FirstNet Authority vice chair throughout Swenson’s tenure leading the board, said he remembers the moment well.

“What was going through my head was, ‘That right there is pure Sue Swenson—says it like it is, keeps her word, and executes flawlessly,’ Johnson said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

“She wanted to leave no question that—if given the proper authority—we would and could, or we ought to be shot. I loved it—and that is pure Sue Swenson.”

Harlin McEwen, who chaired the FirstNet Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) at the time, said Swenson’s testimony was welcomed by first responders.

“When she said that, I think many of us in the public-safety community were really pleased. What that meant was that she was deeply committed to making this work,” McEwen told IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “We said, ‘Those are strong words from a lady who is obviously deeply committed to getting this done.’”

Richard Mirgon, who advocated for the creation of FirstNet while serving as president of APCO, echoed this sentiment.

“That’s what confident leadership looks like,” Mirgon said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. Recalling his thoughts at the time, Mirgon said to himself, “Finally, here’s somebody who gets it, knows where we need to go and is determined to get us there. That was one of those heroic moments.

“That’s the difference with a can-do corporate executive like Sue, who understood cellular networks, who understood the magnitude of it, and was confident enough to say, ‘These are the things we can do.’ It was pretty amazing.”

One of those charged with executing Swenson’s testimony was TJ Kennedy, who later would serve as the FirstNet Authority president.

“At first, I was like, ‘What exactly did she just say?’” Kennedy said. “But at the same point, I totally got it.

“You get to a point where things have to be done, because it’s the right thing to do. I think that’s exactly where Sue was, and I think that’s where we all were in building the plan and the strategy to make FirstNet successful.”

But what about the money?

As memorable as the “we should be shot” quip about the 2022 deadline was, it may not have been the most significant aspect of Swenson’s testimony that day—or even of her exchange with Fischer. Many have asserted that the most important statement came moments later, although it was not underlined with the threat of gunfire.

Fischer noted the financial concerns expressed by government reports about FirstNet and asked what would happen, if the FirstNet Authority did not have enough money to make the NPSBN vision a reality. How would FirstNet address such a funding gap?

“We’re not looking for more money, actually,” Swenson testified during the hearing.

Fischer replied, “You know, that is nice to hear.”

Swenson said, “I know that’s rare, but we take that honestly very seriously.”

Many believe this was a critical commitment. If more money or time was needed from Congress, additional commitments could be added to the already complex NPSBN project and expose the effort to the political whims of the day.

In contrast, the FirstNet Authority was given some important leeway in pursuing its public-private partnership model by meeting self-imposed deadlines and not asking Congress for more money.

“It’s not a good model to depend on your administration to fund you,” Swenson said recently.

As Fischer continued her questioning during the 2015 hearing, Swenson acknowledged that the success of the FirstNet Authority plan revolved around monetizing the value of the 700 MHz spectrum

“If we don’t realize what we believe the value of the spectrum is, we could literally fold up our tents and go home, which is not a good outcome,” Swenson said. “If we don’t realize the value of that spectrum [shrug], it’s going to be very challenging to be self-sustaining.”

But Swenson expressed confidence that the spectrum was valuable enough to make the FirstNet economic model work, although that would only be validated after receiving bids to the FirstNet request for proposals (RFP) that was scheduled to be issued at the end of 2015.

“There’s never enough spectrum,” she said. “It’s like gold.”

The aftermath

Johnson agreed.

“We were completely confident that we wouldn’t have to come back [to Congress for additional funding],” Johnson said recently. “We had modeled the value of the spectrum in various scenarios, and we believed that we could monetize a network with it.

“So we were completely confident, and it turned out to be true. It’s been a decade, and we have not graced their doorsteps with our hand out … I think history is going to show that FirstNet is one of the most successful public-private partnerships in the history of the United States government.”

There is certainly an argument to be made for that assertion. No one at the FirstNet Authority or AT&T would argue that the FirstNet system has been rolled out without some bumps and hiccups, but the bottom line is that FirstNet is a massive government project that apparently will be completed on time and on budget.

And after getting started later than similar public-safety LTE initiatives in smaller countries—notably, the United Kingdom and South Korea—FirstNet now considered the global leader in public-safety broadband communications. While other public-safety LTE efforts struggle to get off the ground, FirstNet is almost complete and already supports more than 19,500 public-safety agencies with more than 3 million connections, according to a recent update from AT&T.

In 2016, three entities responded to the FirstNet RFP by submitting bids to build, operate and maintain the NPSBN. AT&T was selected as the nationwide contractor, with the opportunity to earn as much as $6.5 billion in an incentive-laden deal for building the NPSBN within five years of the network deployment starting in March 2018. More importantly, AT&T gained the right to operate commercially on Band 14—the 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum licensed to the FirstNet Authority—as long as public-safety traffic is given priority and preemption.

In return, the FirstNet Authority gets the nationwide public-safety LTE network that is expected to be upgraded to the latest technology—5G, 6G, 7G, etc.—for the next 25 years. In addition, the contract requires AT&T to make annual payments to the FirstNet Authority totaling $18 billion during the 25-year period of the contract, assuring that FirstNet would be a financially self-sustainable program through at least 2041.

It’s an arrangement that has worked well for AT&T, according to Jason Porter, president of AT&T’s public-sector and FirstNet business units, who has stated that the carrier giant has “the distinct honor and privilege to serve the first-responder community.”

Most important, FirstNet has changed the landscape of public-safety communications. Even agencies that don’t subscribe to FirstNet have benefited, because the existence of FirstNet has made features like public-safety prioritized service (supposedly an impossibility a decade ago) standard fare today. And numerous agencies have noted that competition provided by FirstNet has resulted in better customer service from all providers—a stark change from anecdotes of receiving delayed responses or simply being ignored by carriers several years ago.

“We showed it could be done,” Swenson said recently.

This FirstNet public-private partnership approach is not one that can be duplicated with all government projects, but its success has some questioning why the model is not pursued more often.