Ten years after O’Brien proposal, there is light at the end of the tunnel for public-safety broadband communications

One of my favorite activities during IWCE 2016 in March was a three-hour workshop, during which we revisited many of the events that have transpired during the past decade that have led to the development of FirstNet. That session reinforced just how many people have played key roles in the process to this point, and it was great to take a trip down memory lane to hear familiar stories—as well as a few tales that were new to me.

Now, O’Brien was not the first to suggest that public safety leverage commercial communications standards, and he may not have been the first to talk about public-safety broadband via 4G technology. But there is little doubt that it was O’Brien’s proposal that caused the FCC to abandon the notion of public-safety wideband data and establish a broadband swath that could support LTE.

That transformation was significant. Wideband technology has received little meaningful adoption, which means that equipment likely would have been very expensive had U.S. public safety stayed with the technology. In contrast, LTE has flourished into a global wireless standard with unprecedented economies of scale and rapid development cycles—in fact, LTE releases approved during the last two years have focused on developing public-safety functionality, including mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) service.

Of course, creating standards means little, if no one builds networks that utilize them. But we could learn more about FirstNet’s plans for deployment in two weeks, with even more details being released officially by the end of year—when a contractor could be selected and a deal signed—and as state plans are shared during the first half of 2017 (if current projected schedules can be met). Meanwhile, public-safety initiatives in South Korea and the United Kingdom seem to reinforce that LTE is the right technological choice for future first-responder communications.

It’s safe to say that the public-safety LTE effort in the U.S. has not progressed as O’Brien originally envisioned, as Cyren Call has not been involved in the process for more than seven years. But many of the core principles of O’Brien’s 2006 proposal—leveraging commercial broadband technology and enabling network sharing with public-safety priority—are still in place today, as we await news on the fate of FirstNet.