FirstNet officials shed light on network considerations

One of the biggest challenges faced by FirstNet is the fact that the organization is charged with providing public-safety broadband coverage throughout the than 3.8 million square miles in the United States, and more than 90% of that geography—3.58 million square miles—is considered wilderness, according to Bratcher.

“The rural and wilderness environments create very unique challenges,” he said. “But it also brings the potential for new types of transportable systems, so [first responders] can bring the network with them for those events that occur in areas where it doesn’t make sense to have a site around the clock.”

Some of the options being considered are boomer-site technology being tested by Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR), with funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Bratcher said. In addition, consideration is being given to aerial network deployments—via manned and unmanned vehicles—as well the push for higher-powered devices within 3GPP, the standards body for LTE technology, he said.

From a financial perspective, the greatest capital expenditure for the network is expected to be deployment of the cell sites, while backhaul costs are anticipated as the largest operational cost for FirstNet, Bratcher said.

Other items Bratcher discussed during his presentation included:

• FirstNet officials “have the keys” to the organization’s technical headquarters in Boulder, which will provide technical laboratory space, warehouse space and office space to accommodate 80 staff members;
• The FirstNet CTO has been selected and is expected to begin work within the “next four to six weeks.”
• Other hiring is focused on “senior electronics and computer engineers that have direct LTE architecture experience, as well as mobile-applications-development and security experience.”

In addition, during the full board meeting last Tuesday, the Technology and Planning Committee officially was renamed the Technology Committee.

“The feeling of several of the members was that planning was something that was done by all of the committees, and it was somewhat confusing to have the word ‘planning’ appear  in the names of other [committees],” Craig Farrill, chairman of the Technology Committee, said last Monday in an explanation for the request for the name change.