FirstNet says opt-out states must share revenues, meet nationwide network policies
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FirstNet says opt-out states must share revenues, meet nationwide network policies
A state or territory that chooses the FirstNet opt-out alternative—thereby agreeing to build out the LTE radio access network (RAN) in its jurisdiction—will have to comply with all of FirstNet’s nationwide network policies and will not be able to keep all revenues generated within its boundaries, according to final legal interpretations approved by the FirstNet board.
During a FirstNet board meeting last Friday, members voted unanimously to support 64 final legal interpretations that have been debated in three public-notice proceedings during the past year. These interpretations include rules associated a provision in the law that lets the governor of each state and territory decide whether that jurisdiction will accept the FirstNet deployment plan for the state or “opt out.”
Despite the “opt out” name for the alternative, a state choosing this route would be in the FirstNet system, but the state would deploy the RAN, instead of FirstNet.
FirstNet officials have indicated that there are a handful of states and territories that are so densely populated that they are expected to generate more revenue than is needed to deploy an LTE network within their borders—the District of Columbia is a prime example.
Some state officials have been intrigued by the opt-out alternative almost from the moment that FirstNet was established, with a few initially expressing a desire to have revenue generated from the network help address general state-budget shortfalls. FirstNet officials quickly noted that the law requires all revenues must be reinvested into the FirstNet system, but a legal question remained: Could an opt-out state keep all revenues generated by the RAN it built within the state to deploy a network with greater performance or reduce the subscription costs to public safety?
The answer is “No,” according to the resolution approved by the FirstNet board last Friday. FirstNet Acting Chief Counsel Jason Karp noted that opt-out states will benefit from the use of 20 MHz of 700 MHz broadband spectrum that is licensed to FirstNet, which is mandated to build out a nationwide broadband network for public safety.
“We need to ensure that any revenue that’s generated—particularly in highly dense, populated areas that will generate significant value for the excess capacity available—that that money is appropriately reinvested back into the network in a way … that benefits the entire nation,” Karp said during the meeting. “We don’t want the national deployment to, in any way, suffer because a particularly rich state that is able to generate significant revenue because of that population density retains that revenue to create essentially a higher-quality radio access network in their state than we have in other localities around the country.
“It’s critical that we are leveraging the high-density, high-revenue-generating areas in order to pay for the deployment nationally. We think that’s absolutely what Congress intended. We think that’s the intent of the act and what the act says, and we reiterate that conclusion [in the final legal interpretations].”
FirstNet has gone from a
FirstNet has gone from a Congressionally empowered Authority with the primary mandate of providing spectrum for use in interoperable communications network for Public Safety First Responders, to an all powerful social engineering organization.
So now the current and future FirstNet Boards can on its own determine that no state can do things beyond some arbitrarily established baseline standard; and that no state can determine they need less or more performance capabilities within their individual in-state communication systems.
Public Safety systems are exactly that -a system of systems within each jurisdictional boundary state,local, and national. The appropriate and responsible level of decision making is established under the governance of each of those levels, as it is and has been the practice within these United States for a very long time.
FirstNet now thinks it can tell each state exactly what they must do, when to do it, and how to do it? I say show me that power granted under the auspices of Congress to FirstNet.
FirstNet thinks it has the legal and moral power to tell the individual states what they will do with elements of their respective state budgets, stripping away the choices of the elected officials of each state and the citizens of those states?
It is time to tell FirstNet to provide the Public Safety spectrum with the necessary rules and regulations necessary to promulgate the outcome envisioned by Congress nothing more and nothing less.
FirstNet is Orwellian at best, and building a large unnecessary bureaucracy to achieve its self determined goals and objectives. With self projected powers beyond what I sincerely believe Congress intended.
FirstNet has gone so far beyond its legitimate purpose that is must be reined in now or disbanded now.
The US telecom network used
The US telecom network used to operate on a nest of subsidies.
High cost international calls subsidized the domestic network.
Business users subsidized residential subscribers.
And everybody subsidized rural customers.
Once MCI’s private network was allowed to serve business customers, cross subsidies began to crumble, and the result is the richness of offering that we enjoy today. Also, the myth of natural monopolies in power, telecom and other utilities was unmasked.
Competition started and it made cross subsidies untenable.
FirstNet faces a problem that covering half of the US landmass is going to be horribly expensive and so hopes that cross subsidies might help cover the rural build out. This bumps up against another goal: competitively priced services. You can’t do both: competitive pricing and rural coverage. As a nation we back some income transfer and social engineering, but in the competitive telecom environment we have been retreating from supporting rural telecom for a few years. I fear that big city pricing that is not competitive will in the end lead to rule changes that make opt out easy and end the notion of a homogeneous national network.