Oklahoma, Missouri issue RFPs seeking vendors to build FirstNet RAN alternatives
What is in this article?
Oklahoma, Missouri issue RFPs seeking vendors to build FirstNet RAN alternatives
New Hampshire last year selected Rivada Networks as its alternative vendor. Michigan also completed its RFP evaluation and announced that Rivada Networks tallied the highest score among competing vendors. In addition, seven other states have issued RFP seeking vendor proposals for an alternative to FirstNet’s state plan: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.
To date, no state has provided any indication that its governor will choose the “opt-out” alternative.
Six states have accepted FirstNet deployment plans released on June 19, but those plans do not include crucial information that governors need to know before making an “opt-out” decision. Significant questions remain around the payments that a state would have to make to FirstNet for use of the FirstNet LTE core and the 700 MHz Band 14 spectrum licensed to FirstNet. Those data points are expected to be in FirstNet’s final state plans that likely will be released in mid-September, although no final date for their release has been announced.
After receiving the final state plans, governors will have 90 days to decide to make the “opt-in/opt-out” decision for their states and territories in mid-December. If a governor takes no action on the matter, the state will be treated in the same manner as an “opt-in” state, with AT&T building and maintaining the network in the state for the next 25 years at no cost to the state.