Public Safety Advocate: 5G Interloper, Ready for Public Safety?, Uplifting, More
By necessity, this week’s Advocate will begin at the beginning. During the FirstNet RFP process there were three bidders. As we all know, AT&T won the bid…
Advocate Newsletter
Public Safety Advocate: Quakes, States, Investments and Alliances
During the first full year of network availability, FirstNet has demonstrated how it increases first responders’ effectiveness in handling most disasters including wildfires, tornadoes, flooding,…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Timing
The FirstNet contract as awarded to AT&T, now FirstNet (Built with AT&T), is a twenty-five-year agreement. The initial five years represent the time in which…
Public Safety Advocate: Past, Present, and Future
Though it represents much more than a single day, this is the week we honor D-Day and the far too many brave people who lost…
Public Safety Advocate: Month-End Miscellany
The first order of business this week is to give a shout out on behalf of all those who have given their lives for our…
Public Safety Advocate: The Next Big Thing (Again)
5G is coming! 5G is coming! Everywhere in the world, the cellular industry is pushing fifth-generation (5G) deployments even though not all 5G spectrum has…
Public Safety Advocate: Hurricanes and Other Disasters
Hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, 2019, and a number of agencies and organizations are formulating their predictions about the potential severity of…
Public Safety Advocate: Feds, States in Rural Broadband Push
I recently saw a posting on Twitter from the governor of South Dakota announcing her state is requesting proposals to cover “all corners” of the…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Gains, Some Throttling Broadband, More
The latest numbers are out for FirstNet (Built with AT&T) and as expected, they are really good. At the end of the first quarter of…
Public Safety Advocate: Waiting on Mission Critical Push-To-Talk (Data, Video)
According to Motorola, its Kodiak Networks has developed the first Push-To-Talk (PTT) application for on-network use. On-network means the network hosts the application as opposed…
Public Safety Advocate: Updates on What Public Safety Needs from Congress
This week APCO sent out an email asking for all of us to support the 9-1-1 Saves Act. This bill will upgrade 9-1-1 professionals and…
Public Safety Advocate: Will 8,000 New Satellites End the Digital Divide?
FirstNet is required by law to build out in rural America as it builds out in larger markets. This was included in the law passed…
Public Safety Advocate: Milestones and More
Last week marks the two-year anniversary of the FirstNet award to AT&T. It also marks a full year since the Public Safety core (heart of…
Public Safety Advocate: Return of FirstNet Authority and More
Sounds like a strange title until you realize that once the contract was awarded to AT&T to build and maintain the network, those in the…
Public Safety Advocate: Drive Tests, IWCE, and Palmyra Atoll
After a two-week interruption in my scheduled Advocates, this one will hopefully serve to get back on schedule and to convey what we have been doing…