GAO report identifies several FirstNet challenges, ignores multiple key factors

FirstNet has a really tough job, and it has a lot of work to do.

Those are my main takeaways from the report on FirstNet released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which made the effort at the behest of Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of Senate Commerce Committee.

Of course, the GAO is right. FirstNet faces a difficult task, because it is trying to do something that is unprecedented.

Yes, nationwide LTE networks have been deployed, but they haven’t been designed to public-safety standards of resilience/availability, and they certainly have cost more than the $7 billion Congress directed to the FirstNet effort. That is why the whole world is watching this U.S. initiative closely, hoping that FirstNet finds a way to provide affordable first-responder communications without the massive upfront costs associated with traditional LMR networks.

As is often the case with GAO reports, considerable attention is paid to procedural issues, such as the need for FirstNet to have better internal controls and to formalize its process for evaluating the lessons learned from early-builder projects. I’m not a process expert, but FirstNet’s history is indicative how distracting procedural questions can be.

Personally, I’m not that concerned right now about the process FirstNet uses to evaluate the learning conditions associated with early-builder projects. More worrisome to me is whether the early-builder projects provide all of the learning conditions needed.

For instance, FirstNet officials openly acknowledge the importance of secondary-use revenue to the business model and most hints indicating that commercial carriers will be part of the ultimate partnership structure. Given this, it would be nice to have an early-builder project that could demonstrate how a carrier model would work with public-safety operations.

But the most intriguing part of the GAO report addressed the business-model challenges FirstNet faces. The GAO report does a good job of summarizing most of the challenges facing FirstNet, including the need for affordable user fees, a strong user base and adoption (partially dependent on costs and the definition of a “public-safety entity” that could get priority on the network), coverage and reliability.

These are not new revelations, as the factors have been discussed and debated conceptually for years. However, the GAO notes that few concrete decisions about the network have been made to date. That needs to change, if FirstNet wants to forge the kind of partnership that almost everyone acknowledges is necessary to make the public-safety broadband endeavor viable for the long term, according to the report.