Convergence between public-safety and commercial communications not just a one-way street

Once again, it will be some time before we learn how the FirstNet contractor will address the public safety’s demand for enhanced reliability, but it is not hard to imagine that a successful approach will have an impact in the commercial world.

After all, the FirstNet system will be competing—directly or indirectly—with existing carriers for customers, and there will be a desire to provide similar capabilities. In addition, FirstNet will be sharing infrastructure space at myriad sites—towers, rooftop, small cells, indoor deployments, etc.—and hardening those sites to make FirstNet more reliable also could benefit other co-located providers, especially the carriers associated with FirstNet’s selected contractor.

Increased network reliability is something that every carrier wants from a customer-satisfaction standpoint, but enhancing the dependability of commercial wireless and broadband networks also could have a significant strategic impact.

For years, telecom carriers have expressed a desire to have a clear path to retire legacy copper networks, but one of the arguments raised by regulators has been that wireless services are not as dependable as wireline services, particularly when wireless is used from indoor locations.

That’s a similar challenge to the one that the FirstNet contractor will face as it develops a nationwide public-safety broadband network. If the system is not extremely robust—and that includes indoor coverage—there’s a very real chance that it won’t be adopted by first responders, which could result in the contractor paying some hefty financial penalties, not to mention facing scrutiny from the FirstNet board and federal-government officials.

On the other hand, a successful implementation of the FirstNet vision should result in many loyal public-safety customers and should provide valuable lessons learned, in terms of building a highly reliable network.

Will these reliability techniques used for FirstNet be enough to convince regulators that legacy copper networks can be retired? It’s impossible to predict the heavy political effort that would be involved, but there should be little question that demonstrating significantly increased reliability, resiliency and availability of a commercial network would give carriers the best foundation to argue such a case.