Rivada Networks CEO Ganley says spectrum should be leveraged, traditional public-safety communications model ‘dead’

In its draft request-for-proposal (RFP) documents, FirstNet says it is seeking a partner—or partners—that could leverage the 700 MHz spectrum on a secondary basis and utilize as much as $6.5 billion of the federal funding to deploy and maintain the much-anticipated public-safety broadband network. In addition, the partner/partners would pay FirstNet on a quarterly basis, the draft RFP proposes.

Meeting FirstNet’s requirements is the top priority for Rivada Networks, Ganley said.

“We’re very focused on doing a good job for FirstNet, if we are fortunate enough to be selected to do that, and that is what we are focused on,” he said.

“Rivada Networks has always—first and foremost—been laser focused on fulfilling this public-safety mission and giving public safety exactly what it needs. It’s not a matter of trying to fit public safety into something that already exists. It’s a matter of doing something that leverages what already exists but fits exactly into public safety’s requirements, and that’s exactly what we have done. And nobody else has taken the same approach as us.”

Rivada Networks has demonstrated its DSA capabilities to the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) staff in Boulder, Colo., and the company conducted demonstrations of public-safety preemption functionality and its secondary-market technology during IWCE 2015 in Las Vegas.

To date, Rivada Networks has not operated DSA in a live network setting, but Ganley said the company’s solution is ready for such use.

“The fact is that this is LTE technology. It is 3GPP-compliant,” Ganley said. “This is not something we invented yesterday; it’s now quite mature. It was designed specifically and exactly with the public-safety mission in mind, and the only reason it hasn’t been deployed is that it has taken awhile for FirstNet to get off of the ground, which is understandable.

“We’ve got carrier-grade loads being produced by validated simulators [in demonstrations], which are exactly the same simulators that Verizon uses to test its new stuff that’s about to be deployed. We’re putting carrier loads on this technology, and it’s working.”