All eyes on California as Florida makes FirstNet ‘opt-in’ announcement, New Hampshire reverses ‘opt-out’ plans

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Florida Gov. Rick Scott today announced that accepted the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) deployment plan offered by FirstNet and AT&T on behalf of their states, meaning California is the only state that has not made an “opt-in” announcement by today’s deadline.

Activities in Florida and New Hampshire were being monitored closely, because Florida is among the most-populous states in the U.S., and New Hampshire was the only state to have its governor announce plans to pursue the FirstNet “opt-out” alternative.

However, Sununu never submitted official notification of his “opt-out” announcement that was made early this month. Today, Sununu reversed his previous announcement and made an “opt-in” decision. In addition, Sununu said “it now appears likely that no other states will opt-out.”

“New Hampshire was given two options: to ‘opt-in’ and choose the national contractor AT&T’s plan or ‘opt-out’ and go with an alternative plan proposed by Rivada,” Sununu said in a prepared statement. “Following our decision to opt-out and go with the Rivada plan that provides better coverage, more system control and an opportunity to share in the revenue streams of the business, we proceeded to have extensive discussions with other governors across the country to help them understand the benefits of such a system. Many of these states had previously expressed serious interest in pursuing an independent opt-out path.

“While we were successful in working with First Net to remove the unreasonable fees and penalties, the decision deadline of December 28th approached too quickly for these other states to feel confident in an opt-out decision. As a result, it now appears likely that no other states will opt-out.

“While Rivada’s plan remains the better option for New Hampshire, I have determined that the additional risk associated with being the only state to opt-out creates too high a barrier for New Hampshire to continue down the opt-out path alone.”

Florida Gov. Scott released a copy of his letter that notifies FirstNet of his “opt-in” decision, which comes weeks after a state committee recommended that he should accept the FirstNet state plan.

“I believe this is in the best interest for Florida taxpayers,” Scott stated in the letter.

Under the law that established FirstNet, governors in all 56 states and territories have the choice of making an “opt-in” decision—accepting the FirstNet deployment plan and allowing AT&T to build the LTE radio access network (RAN) within the state’s borders at no cost to the state—or pursuing the “opt-out” alternative, which would require the state to be responsible for building and maintaining the RAN for the next 25 years.

With the announcements from Florida and New Hampshire, California is the only state or territory that has not made an “opt-in” announcement among those that face a decision deadline today. Three Pacific territories—Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands—did not receive their state plans until this month and have a March 12 deadline for “opt-in/opt-out” decisions.

Whether New Hampshire would actually pursue the “opt-out” alternative—the state selected Rivada Networks as its alternative-RAN vendor in the summer of 2016—has been a subject of considerable speculation by public-safety observers during the past few weeks.