APCO says what many in public safety believe, calling story about FirstNet ‘inaccurate’ and ‘inflammatory’

It may have been one of the most deflating moments of my professional career. A little more than two months ago, I told my wife that I would be traveling to Chicago later that week to attend the FirstNet board meeting. Her straightforward response: “OK, but what’s FirstNet?”

As someone who has probably written as much about FirstNet and public-safety broadband as any journalist on the planet, I was taken aback. Had I really not told her about this public-safety-communications initiative that consumes much of my work life?

When FirstNet initially was established, I don’t believe I referred to it by name, instead opting for something generic like “the organization trying to build a wireless LTE network for public safety nationwide,” which probably was enough to put her to sleep—or make my statement sound like those from the schoolteacher in Charlie Brown movies. Maybe I never drew a clear connection between FirstNet and that public-safety broadband effort I have been writing about for the past decade; maybe my explanations were just too boring to remember.

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that even my extremely intelligent wife had no clue what FirstNet is, because it has not received a lot of attention from mainstream media outlets. And I can’t tell you how many times I have received the same reaction from rank-and-file public-safety officers—including some in areas that have early-builder public-safety LTE networks—when I mention FirstNet.

Indeed, FirstNet and the public-safety community will have a big job in disseminating the story about FirstNet (hopefully, they will do a better job than I have with my wife). It’s a task that should be much more straightforward when a contractor has been selected—still slated for Nov. 1—and information about pricing, services and deployments schedules are known, but it certainly won’t be easy.

That is why it is so discouraging to read articles about FirstNet such as the one in The Atlantic entitled “The $47 billion network that’s already obsolete,” which characterizes FirstNet as unnecessary, noting in the first line that “the prize for the most wasteful post-9/11 initiative arguably should go to FirstNet.”

Most readers of the headline probably believe that taxpayers are on the hook for the $47 billion figure, but that’s simply not the case. FirstNet’s nationwide public-safety broadband network could cost that much—some experts have estimated more, others less—but the reality is that Congress only allocated $7 billion (of spectrum-auction proceeds, not tax dollars) to the initiative, and federal lawmakers have not given even the slightest inkling that any more federal funds will be used.

Fortunately, the ingenious FirstNet request for proposals (RFP) is structured in a way that no additional funding should be needed. In fact, even The Atlantic story notes that the winning contractor will have pay FirstNet at least $5.6 billion (actually $5.625 billion)—probably more, because there are at least three announced bidders competing for the project.

So—at worst—the FirstNet system will cost a net total of $1.375 billion over 25 years. When I think of examples of “wasteful spending” in the federal government, getting a $47 billion network for less than $1.4 billion would not make my list.