Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Potpourri
The first item of interest for FirstNet and its rural customers should be the progress on H.R. 3994. If passed by Congress and signed into law, this bill will provide…
The first item of interest for FirstNet and its rural customers should be the progress on H.R. 3994. If passed by Congress and signed into law, this bill will provide…
First, let me be very clear, this is NOT about Mission-Critical PTT (which may someday be available and used for dispatch, day-to-day patrols, and local incidents). This is about FirstNet as…
FirstNet (Built by AT&T) is required to provide public safety broadband in rural America. Recently, AT&T accepted the challenge and committed to invest an additional $2 billion in rural build-out….
It appears from information provided by FirstNet that more than 1,000 public safety agencies have signed on to the network and are commencing to put it to use. However, some…
[Editor’s Note: This week’s newsletter is being published early due to impending cataract surgery and recovery.] Sometimes what we are trying to convey is interpreted by others as something we…
During speeches at the recent PSCR meeting in San Diego, two people made points that started me thinking about what lies ahead for FirstNet. The first was the Chair of…
This week I attended part of NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) yearly event in San Diego. At this event, the PSCR brings many of its people to discuss what…
I just returned from the largest amateur (ham) radio convention in the United States, held each year near Dayton, Ohio or, to be precise, at the Greene County Fairgrounds in…
Before FirstNet, those in the public safety community who were working toward the goal of a nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN) understood that even if Congress was convinced to…
For the past few weeks I have been talking with folks in D.C., states, and locally about FirstNet and if and when it will replace Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems….
Some of public safety’s spectrum is part of a larger war between Congress, NTIA, the FCC and, of course, all of the public safety community including most public safety organizations….
It appears as though the more public safety agencies join FirstNet the more those following the progress as “outsiders” (not public safety personnel) are making noises about how FirstNet will…
When we add smartphones and tablets to the mix of public safety communications devices we are adding yet another set of devices that run on batteries that need to be…
For the past two weeks I have been sidelined with a nasty infection I appear to have brought home as a souvenir from IWCE in Orlando. Many important things happened…
T-Band Call to Action The T-Band (470-512 MHz) is spectrum used by both the public safety community and business users in 11 metro areas of the United States. When the…