FirstNet sheds light on financial challenges during Industry Day event 

Jason Karp, FirstNet’s acting chief counsel, acknowledged that this timing issue is a problem, describing it as “the bane of my existence as a lawyer” associated with FirstNet.

“From a practical perspective, what we are proposing in the draft RFP documents and special notice is an all-opt-in scenario, as an initial matter,” Karp said. “We want to understand what is the best solution that you [offerers] can bring to the table. We understand that … there may be states that are seeking to opt out, and that theoretically could change the financial picture—as well as the operational picture—of the initial submissions that we get.

“We’re going to have to have a mechanism for incorporating that, and that could be done in a lot of different ways. At this point, we’re very early in the process, and we’re looking for feedback—quite frankly—on this. This could be a single award; this could be multiple awards; this could be through change-order process. There’s a lot of mechanisms that we can bring to bear within the government process to account for that process within the act. Frankly, at a draft stage for the RFP, we’re looking for very creative solutions, in terms of how we approach this.”

Quinlan said that FirstNet wants to enter into a “long-term contractual arrangement” that provides assurances that public-safety users receive competitive pricing as market conditions change.

“Our intent is to have contractual provisions that ensure that we have a quality network but also ensure that public safety is facing the best price possible for service, thereby promoting one of our underlying missions of broadband adoption for public-safety users,” Quinlan said.

Overall, Quinlan provide the following direction to entities that plan to respond to the FirstNet draft RFP:

“We would have offerers review our objectives, as laid out in the statement of objectives, develop the best possible solution they could for public safety, and then review our assets—shown here as Band 14, which enables both the public-safety user fees and the excess network capacity,” he said. “Then, they would communicate to FirstNet how much government funding is required and the fixed payments to FirstNet over time for the use of FirstNet’s assets and to support ongoing program costs throughout the life of the contract.”