FirstNet, AT&T drop ‘draft state plan’ term, announce process for early ‘opt-in’ decisions

Among the items that still need to be resolved are the terms of use for individuals who are given full access to the state plans—an issue cited by officials in many states. AT&T officials do not want sensitive proprietary information about its network plans shared widely, while state and local representatives want to be able share network characteristics with key shareholders and influencers.

“We’re going to find a place where everybody’s comfortable,” Reed said. “The goal is to have terms of use that will have the states appropriately protect the information we’re sharing with them in the state-plan portal. Obviously, we’re presenting information in the state-plan portal that we would want a state to appropriately protect, maintain, not disclose.”

In addition, it is still not entirely clear which users will get the preemptive access to the FirstNet system. Fire, EMS and law-enforcement personnel are in the “primary” classification, and utilities are generally considered to be in the “extended primary” category, but the status of public-safety answering point (PSAP) personnel and private security staff at universities and other enterprises has not been determined—and could be different in different states, Sambar said.

“With all of those folks, we need to have discussions with the states, counties and local entities to determine whether they are primary or extended primary, and there’s flexibility in that,” Sambar said. “We want to protect the network and the integrity of the network—because preemption is obviously something that’s very sensitive and important to public safety, so we want to make sure that’s protected—but we also want flexibility in our solution.”