FirstNet looks to initiate state consultations in July
“For instance, where are the calls at in your state … where the 911 responses happen? How do your users use technology today, and how to you expect that they’re going to be utilizing it in the future?” Kennedy said. “If you are state-police-agency X, and you use laptops with wireless cards today, and you expect to use that with LTE cards from FirstNet in the future, that’s the kind of things we can start looking at—what are the number of public-safety users, where are they, and where do they respond to?
“That kind of user-demand information and other things are going to drive into a state plan. And it drives into the plan, regardless whether it’s FirstNet’s plan, the state’s plan, or the state’s and FirstNet’s plan. It’s all important stuff that we should be doing, so that’s what we’re focused on right now.”
To pay for planning activities, most states and territories are using funding provided using Phase I funds from the State and Local Implementation Grant Program (SLIGP) being administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that are focused on outreach with potential FirstNet customers in each jurisdiction. States and territories can begin to use grants associated with SLIGP Phase II when FirstNet determines what information it wants the jurisdictions to provide during individual consultations—the Phase II money can be used to pay for resources needed to gather this data.
Kennedy emphasized that the state checklist that will be released later this month is not the data-gathering checklist that will jumpstart SLIGP Phase II activities. There is no timeline currently for the completion of the data-gathering checklist, he said.
“What we don’t want to do is say, ‘Go gather everything,’” Kennedy said. “We want to be as specific as possible, both to value their time and to make sure that we’re gathering the right assets. So, the answer is that we’re not ready to start that yet.”