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
FirstNet Vice Chairman Jeff Johnson echoed this sentiment.
“We are building this nationwide network for public safety, and that doesn’t mean seven of 56 states, territories and commonwealths—it means all 56,” Johnson said. “That means we’re going to have to take resources from areas that produce more, and share them in the places don’t produce enough.
“That’s not a point that should be lost on anybody. Congress has plenty of opportunities to say, ‘This is for this state, and this is for that state,’ but they didn’t. This is a nationwide network, and that’s our charge.”
In a related legal interpretation, opt-out states will have to adhere to all FirstNet network policies. Conceptually, this was expected, but Karp noted that the FirstNet network policies would not be static.
“Our network policies are something that are going to be deployed on an ongoing basis—they’re going to change, they’re going to be variable for a long period of time, and they’re critical,” Karp said. “We preliminarily concluded in the original notice and confirm that our network policies have to apply across the board, whether a state assumes that responsibility or whether it’s FirstNet responsibility. And that’s key.
“That’s key for interoperability, to ensure that we have one nationwide network, no matter who is responsible for the deployment of pieces of it. [It’s key to ensure] that public safety, when they cross state boundaries, are getting the exact same user experience in State A as they are in State B, because we know public-safety incidents don’t stop at the state border.”
Other final legal interpretations approved by the board include rules regarding the role of governors in the opt-out procedure and the nature of FirstNet’s state-plan proposal, based on a presentation made by FirstNet staff members during the meeting. Complete text of the 64 legal interpretations is expected to be released later this week, according to FirstNet spokesman Ryan Oremland.
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.