LA-RICS helped by 700 MHz narrowband order, set to begin LTE network deployment next week

Both the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are committed to the project, which is enough participation—with the grant money—to pay for the construction of the Band 14 LTE network. But LA-RICS faces significant challenges as it tries to persuade local public-safety agencies to join its LMR and LTE systems, Mallon said.

“We’ve had some cities opt out, particularly some of the smaller cities–they’re dubious about the cost of participation in LA-RICS,” Mallon said. “A lot of them have mobile LMR systems that still have some appreciable life. So, they’re concerned about jumping over to the LA-RICS system and begin to participate in that … [when] they’ve got a stranded investment with a useful life. So, they’ve got to come to some kind of a balance on that [for LMR].

“On the LTE side, the questions are: What is the coverage? How much is it going to cost us in the final interpretation versus what they are going to pay AT&T, T-Mobile or one of the other commercial vendors. We’re clearly hoping that we get some clarity on where FirstNet is going to go with the system.”

With uncertainty surrounding the number of users on the networks, developing fiscal plans to ensure long-term sustainability of the LTE and LMR systems is very challenging, Mallon said.

“It’s [a matter of] which came first, the chicken or the egg?” he said. “The business plan is very heavily dependent on what your subscribers are going to be, and your subscribers are holding off until they know what the cost is going to be—but the costs can’t be determined until you know how many subscribers are going to be on it.

“It is a great example of the chicken and the egg.”