Fire Chiefs Association Reverses Course on NextNav

Late last month, the California Fire Chiefs Association reversed its position of support
for NextNav, withdrawing that support in a letter to the FCC. This prompted a statement
from NextNav’s Vice President of Government Affairs, Ed Mortimer, where he said they
believed the association was misinformed by “special interest,” according to a statement
from Mortimer. Well, in an odd sort of way he was correct, but what he missed was that
NextNav is the “special interest” that did the misinforming. Fundamentally, this is an
insult to the fire chiefs in California, suggesting that they are not working in the best
interest of their members and the public in general. I get how associations can
inadvertently be motivated by special interests. I’ve seen it, and it is almost always
related to having bad information from special interest groups. That is exactly what
happened: NextNav didn’t tell the entire story, and they are the only ones in this debate
who financially gain—as that is a key indication of special interest. For California Fire
Chiefs, there is no financial motive, and the California Fire Chiefs are to be commended
for saying they had bad information and going on the record to say so. Their motive was
accuracy and correcting the record. The fact is their position should get more credibility
because they did their homework and conducted additional research. Also, we all know
it’s hard to admit you made a mistake, and they just did the hard part.

The issue at hand is that NextNav is attempting to get the FCC to change rules to swap
spectrum so they can obtain a single aggregate block of spectrum that will benefit them
as a company. They are asking to swap lower-value spectrum—which they did pay
for—in exchange for higher-value spectrum without paying the true market value of it.
They would then be charging others to use it. Some estimates suggest the
increased value to the company could be $1 to $3 billion. Now that’s special-interest
motivation.

However, there is a real threat to public safety with this spectrum swap that would have
a significant impact on us. I won’t get into those technical details at this time, as much
has been written and, to be frank, you would start to read it, roll your eyes back in pain,
and stop reading. So my focus is the public policy statement from the California Fire
Chiefs Association, which relates to what is best for first responders. Here is a portion of
the quote from the Association’s filing:
“…we have concluded that the approach reflected in the prior filing does not sufficiently
address the operational, governance, and long-term public safety considerations
important to our membership. The California Fire Chiefs Association believes that any
advancement of PNT technologies affecting public safety must be technology-neutral,
fully vetted, operationally proven, and developed through a process that ensures
transparency, broad stakeholder engagement, and protection of mission-critical public
safety communications and systems.”

Let me give you the CliffsNotes version (ouch, did I just date myself?). Currently,
NextNav provides technology to carriers to support current 9-1-1 system location
services that meets FCC standards. The problem is there is no future in it, as there is newer, better technology on the horizon that is based on open standards. NextNav is a for-profit company with stockholders that need a long-term revenue source. That is documented if you do a deep dive on their
financials showing how much debt they have. Their solution to be profitable is to get the
FCC to change current rules that give them a lock on higher-value spectrum and a
proprietary solution that has significant value. In the financial world, this is called a
“moat” because it is protected revenue and high value.

At this point you might be saying, why do we care? Because there is high risk that this
spectrum and solution will harm public safety systems. This risk has a high likelihood of
creating a similar problem to what Nextel created, which cost hundreds of millions of
dollars to solve. There are several filings with the FCC that articulate this problem. The
other significant problem is that it is not based on open standards. Public safety has
spent decades fighting for open standards that create competition and, more
importantly, create products and tools that evolve at a reasonable cost. What they have
doesn’t do any of this.

This is a spectrum play by NextNav to increase the value of the spectrum they use so
that their technology can be sold and their investors can get their money back. That is
the solution to the debt problem. They’re in trouble, and they need public safety to
support their solution to bail them out of a bad position.

Look, their debt isn’t our problem, and we shouldn’t be the solution to their investors
making money or even getting their money back. However, we have to care at this
point, as their solution has a very high probability of creating interference for life-saving
systems. Again, this has been clearly articulated in many FCC filings. We cannot allow
ourselves to take the risk that this will create the same problem that Nextel inadvertently
caused, where the fix cost hundreds of millions of dollars, or, in this case, may cost
billions of dollars to fix based upon information in the FCC’s record. Public safety has
been talked into a bad position before. I know—I’ve been there. Being pushed into a
technology that has high risk doesn’t benefit us, especially when there are open
standards and technology on the horizon. To explain that would be another mind-
bending discussion on cellular system tech to be deployed in the next couple of years. I
would suggest that is why they are on a fast track: because they could be obsolete in
the near future.

At the end of the day, let’s thank the California Fire Chiefs Association for doing the right
thing for the right reason. I know of many associations that would not have done that.