LA County portion of LA-RICS public-safety LTE network halted for two weeks, as deadline looms

Los Angeles County’s board of supervisors last week decided to halt construction of controversial public-safety LTE towers near fire stations and other county-owned property for at least two weeks, when the board can revisit the matter. With a Sept. 30 funding deadline looming for the project, a county official said he believes the project still could be finished on time but further delays could undermine the public-safety broadband initiative.

During the county board’s meeting on Tuesday, a firefighters union led a protest against the installation of LTE cell sites near fire stations that were being deployed as part of the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) broadband network. LA County supervisors voted to halt the installation of cell sites that are of concern to the firefighters and nearby residents, according to Scott Edson, commander in the sheriff’s technology and support division for LA County—a leading participant in the LA-RICS joint powers authority (JPA).

“Because of the protest, they put that vote [to approve the LA-RICS sites in the county] off for two weeks,” Edson said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Their statements were basically: ‘Please discontinue any construction at county sites for which the fire department is concerned or that the public is concerned, and the public can be concerned for health or aesthetics. But continue to move forward anywhere else, because we want this project to move forward, although we want to re-evaluate how we handle and where we build, in relation to fire stations and aesthetics.’”

Being constructed by Motorola Solutions, the LA-RICS broadband initiative is by far the largest public-safety LTE project in the country, and the system eventually supposed to provide early “lessons learned” for FirstNet and eventually be integrated into FirstNet’s nationwide public-safety broadband network.

Edson said he remains optimistic that the LA-RICS public-safety LTE project will be completed, citing its importance to the safety of firefighters, other first responders and the citizens they are sworn to protect.

“I don’t think the project is going to be killed by this, because there is just too much value in what we’re building,” Edson said. “It doesn’t make sense to throw it away.”

Most of the LA-RICS public-safety LTE system is being funded by $154.6 million in Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grants that are administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Under the terms of those grants, LA-RICS must spend the BTOP funds for the public-safety LTE network by Sept. 30 or return any unused funds.

This reality also was addressed by the LA County board of supervisors, according to Edson.

“They asked that LA-RICS do a little better job of marketing and getting out into the community, and that they draft a letter to NTIA to see if they can get an extension on the BTOP grant,” he said.

LA-RICS Executive Director Patrick Mallon said during an IWCE session earlier this month that he has heard politicians express the belief that an extension to the BTOP grant could be secured. Indeed, NTIA has extended the BTOP deadline before, but that primarily was attributable to the fact that NTIA froze progress on public-safety LTE projects after Congress created FirstNet.

Mallon said his discussions with federal officials indicate that there is “not a chance in hell” that NTIA would provide another deadline extension for LA-RICS to use the BTOP grant funds.

Multiple attempts by IWCE’s Urgent Communications to speak with Mallon during the past week for this article were unsuccessful.