FirstNet RFP outlines financial penalties for contractor, if public-safety adoption targets are missed

Providing communications to the primary user group of fire, EMS and law enforcement has been the expected focus of the FirstNet since its conception, there has been considerable industry debate about the manner in which traffic the extended primary user group—for instance, utilities, governments, healthcare entities and transportation providers—should be treated on the network.

Prioritization and preemption issues are not addressed in the RFP, other than the requirement that such functionality must be included in the network. Details about how that will work operationally are still being formulated.

Whether the contractor meets its public-safety adoption goals is based on the number of device connections utilized by public-safety users.

“For the purposes of this disincentive mechanism, FirstNet defines a device connection as a device on a post-paid contract with an eligible NPSBN user that has been generating billable revenue for three consecutive months. Each device connection will be assigned to the state or territory based on the registered billing address of that device connection. The connection targets will serve as the basis for the disincentive mechanism structure further described below.”

FirstNet officials have estimated that there are 4 million to 12 million public-safety users in the U.S., depending on how broadly the public-safety-entity definition is interpreted.

One potential complication in this formula is the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as sensors and wearables. For instance, a first responder in the field could utilize several different devices at an incident scene, but each of the devices could utilize separate connections or the data traffic could be aggregated via a wearable gateway and be transmitted over a single connection. How those devices are calculated could impact whether the contractor has to pay a disincentive penalty.

Another potential complication cited by some industry sources is the growth of cybercrime and cyberattacks, which introduces the possibility of a potential new wave of public-safety users—for instance, key security personnel in data centers—that may not have been considered part of public safety under a traditional definition but may be relevant today.