Even in its first year, FirstNet-AT&T partnership has a significant impact on public-safety communications

By Donny Jackson in Urgent Matters

It has only been a year since AT&T was awarded with the nationwide FirstNet contract. For public safety, progress on the FirstNet LTE system is moving much faster than expected, driven largely by the decision to provide priority and preemption across all of AT&T’s commercial spectrum.

Some of the most significant FirstNet questions revolve around technologies that are not commercially available yet. Push-to-talk-over-cellular (PoC) solutions already are having a significant impact on the LMR market serving enterprise and commercial customers. Some speculate that mission-critical-push-to-talk (MCPTT) could have a similar impact in the public-safety and critical-infrastructure arenas.

Donny Jackson is editor of Urgent Communications magazine. Before joining UC in 2002, he covered telecommunications for four years as a freelance writer and as news editor for Telephony magazine. Prior to that, he worked for suburban newspapers in the Dallas area, serving as editor-in-chief for the Irving News and the Las Colinas Business News.