FirstNet education is crucial, but it does not lend itself well to sound bites, elevator pitches

FirstNet’s opt-out aspect is not the only area where answers may sound like double speak when summarized and can be confusing even with more complete context, which can take some time to explain. Take this potential question-and-answer in an attempt to describe the FirstNet deal:

• How much will the FirstNet system cost? The government estimates up to $47 billion, but Congress only allocated $7 billion. FirstNet will pay the contractor $6.5 billion of that, according to the request for proposals (RFP).
• So, FirstNet doesn’t have enough money to do this, and it’s essentially going to be broke before it gets started? No, the winning contractor is going to build the estimated $47 billion network, and it will pay FirstNet at least $5.625 billion over the next 25 years to sustain FirstNet during that period.
• That’s not how RFPs work—the government is supposed to just pay a contractor, right? Not in this case. This is a public-private partnership, and FirstNet is trying an unprecedented approach.
• Why would a contractor be willing to build a network and run it for 25 years, when it won’t even get $1 billion in net cash? Because the contractor can make a lot of money by gaining access to FirstNet’s valuable spectrum, which it can use to sell commercial services.
• I thought this was a public-safety network, not a commercial network? It is. Public safety will get prioritized access to the network, but the contractor can offer commercial services on a secondary basis.
• You mentioned spectrum earlier. What is that? (Questioner’s eyes glaze over during an explanation of Wireless 101)

Not everything about FirstNet has to be that bad, but it is easy to go down a rabbit hole of conversation on any of a number of tangents.

The good news is that many oft-repeated questions should be able to be answered after a FirstNet contractor is chosen, such as who will build the network, who qualifies as a public-safety entity that gets prioritized access and what the pricing model will be for subscribing first-responder agencies.

But there are many other questions that will not be answered for some time, with the biggest being whether FirstNet’s mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) might supplant private LMR networks as public safety’s go-to offering for mission-critical voice communications. It’s a question that local LMR radio shops and municipal chief financial officers (CFOs) really want answered, albeit for very different reasons.

The reality is that explaining FirstNet is not easy and straightforward. It’s important that FirstNet, government officials and, yes, journalists like myself take the time to accurately portray the offerings associated with this unprecedented initiative and the implications of the choices. After all, lives are stakes, and we all have to live with the consequences of these upcoming decisions for the next quarter century.