STA-ing alive

On Aug. 1, the FCC released an order that cleared a path for Charlotte and Harris County to proceed, under limited circumstances. The commission approved the interoperability showings for both entities, which was a final prerequisite for proceeding under the pre-FirstNet regime.

However, the FCC order initially only allows the entities to operate only on the PSST spectrum — not the D Block, which Congress mandated to be licensed to FirstNet — until Sept. 2, after which Charlotte, Harris County and any other qualifying jurisdiction would have to be granted an STA every six months to continue operating its network.

For Charlotte, proceeding with its LTE plans without knowing whether it would have authority to operate on 700 MHz broadband spectrum introduces too much uncertainty for the city to proceed, according to Chuck Robinson, the city's director of shared services.

"To me, an STA is real scary," he said. "Without some kind of assurance that we can operate on the spectrum until either FirstNet provides services to us or our network elements are incorporated into FirstNet, we can't operate.

"Nobody's offering to pay our operating costs. Without a complete network that I know is going to be there for awhile, it's difficult for me to enter into maintenance contracts, tower contracts and all of these other things."

Harris County officials acknowledge the uncertainties associated with STAs but are opting to proceed with operations on its 6-site system, which officials hope to expand to a 14-site network in the near future.

"We understand that there is some risk involved with going live on an STA, but we're pretty confident that it's eventually going to get a permanent license, and we'll be operating permanently," said Craig Bernard, Harris County's senior director of mobility.

A potential complicating factor is an Aug. 17 letter from NTIA that asked the FCC to allow early-mover entities to operate LTE networks only if they have networks that utilize the full 20 MHz of 700 MHz broadband spectrum allocated to public safety. Citing findings from the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program, NTIA said that the transition of LTE networks from 10 MHz to 20 MHz has been "labor-intensive and lengthy," which would introduce unwanted costs into any deployments.

"In addition to the added expense in personnel and time, the change could require additional license fees and software charges," the NTIA letter states. "A vendor has yet to demonstrate a streamlined path for this upgrade that could possibly be managed for efficient network launch."

All jurisdictions would like to be allowed to use the entire 20 MHz swath of spectrum for any deployment, because it would enhance their network performance. However, many industry sources question whether the FCC has the legal authority to grant STA use of spectrum licensed to FirstNet — an independent body within NTIA — and whether it would be wise politically to grant STAs on those airwaves without getting FirstNet's permission first.

In addition, there are other unknowns that remain in the equation, such as the potential impact that post-election personnel changes at NTIA could have, particularly if there is a change in presidential administrations.

Despite all of these hurdles, there is a strong sentiment that having some early-mover projects operating would be helpful to FirstNet's planning efforts, because real-world deployments can allow the FirstNet board to make design and deployment decisions based on actual public-safety LTE experiences, rather than relying solely on consultant reports and recommendations based on theoretical models.

"We all agree that allowing some number of these projects to go forward will be useful; we'll learn something from it, if we're testing the environment that we're going to have in FirstNet," Strickling said. "I think the other thing there's general agreement on is that we should be doing whatever we can to protect the taxpayer money in all of this.

"I think that gives me some cause for optimism that we can find a way through this issue with at least possibly one, two or three of the projects."

A potential complicating factor is an Aug. 17 letter from NTIA that asked the FCC to allow early-mover entities to operate LTE networks only if they have networks that utilize the full 20 MHz of 700 MHz broadband spectrum allocated to public safety. Citing findings from the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program, NTIA said that the transition of LTE networks from 10 MHz to 20 MHz has been "labor-intensive and lengthy," which would introduce unwanted costs into any deployments.

"In addition to the added expense in personnel and time, the change could require additional license fees and software charges," the NTIA letter states. "A vendor has yet to demonstrate a streamlined path for this upgrade that could possibly be managed for efficient network launch."

All jurisdictions would like to be allowed to use the entire 20 MHz swath of spectrum for any deployment, because it would enhance their network performance. However, many industry sources question whether the FCC has the legal authority to grant STA use of spectrum licensed to FirstNet — an independent body within NTIA — and whether it would be wise politically to grant STAs on those airwaves without getting FirstNet's permission first.

In addition, there are other unknowns that remain in the equation, such as the potential impact that post-election personnel changes at NTIA could have, particularly if there is a change in presidential administrations.

Despite all of these hurdles, there is a strong sentiment that having some early-mover projects operating would be helpful to FirstNet's planning efforts, because real-world deployments can allow the FirstNet board to make design and deployment decisions based on actual public-safety LTE experiences, rather than relying solely on consultant reports and recommendations based on theoretical models.

"We all agree that allowing some number of these projects to go forward will be useful; we'll learn something from it, if we're testing the environment that we're going to have in FirstNet," Strickling said. "I think the other thing there's general agreement on is that we should be doing whatever we can to protect the taxpayer money in all of this.

"I think that gives me some cause for optimism that we can find a way through this issue with at least possibly one, two or three of the projects."