Public Safety Advocate: What Is the Plan?
An Open Letter to Those Who Oversee, Plan, Build, and Operate the FirstNet Network This Advocate is not about blame, it is about mistakes all of us made, where we are today,…
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Public Safety Advocate: Spectrum, Licensed and Unlicensed, Who Wins, Who Loses
Article after article has been written to make a case that broadband in the United States should be available to all regardless of where they are located or their ability…
Public Safety Advocate: Thank You, Ed Parkinson; RapidSOS; Call for Public Safety Hall of Fame
Those who have been reading the Advocate for any length of time know I rarely feature individuals in my articles but when I do, it is to impart information that…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet (Built with AT&T) Announces More Communications Tools
At IWCE 2022, FirstNet announced a new, significant upgrade to FirstNet (Built with AT&T) that prompted me to write about communications tools for first responders. One of these tools is…
Public Safety Advocate: More IWCE, Throwback April Fool’s, Rural Broadband
I am disappointed that I cannot find the archived article I wrote a number of years ago and published on April Fool’s Day. I had described how I was at…
Public Safety Advocate: Redefining Push-To-Talk, Reader Survey
The Webster Dictionary defines “Unified” as “Brought together as one.” Under the public-safety Incident Command (IC) structure, “Unified” means “Unified Command (UC): In incidents involving multiple jurisdictions, a single jurisdiction with multiagency involvement,…
Public Safety Advocate: Survey, Happy Anniversary FirstNet, Less Expensive FirstNet Devices
We will be in Washington, DC next week to participate in a celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the signing of the bill that created FirstNet. Thus there will not be…
Public Safety Advocate: PSSA 4.9 GHz Filing with FCC, How to File
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the Public Safety Spectrum Alliance’s (PSSA) stay request for the previous FCC’s plan to take back the 50 MHz of 4.9-GHz spectrum it…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Tribal Successes, Interoperable PTT and Data, AT&T and FirstNet Authority Move Forward
The US Department of the Interior recently conducted a series of webinars to highlight advances within the various Tribal communities. I was most interested in the FirstNet portion of the…
Public Safety Advocate: Good News for Push-To-Talk Interoperability?, Bad News for 6-GHz Microwave
Last week, several readers pointed out that cloud-based interoperability might not always be best for network-to-network and network-to-Land Mobile Radio (LMR) Push-To-Talk (PTT) interoperability. For example, one reader suggested Los…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Authority Off-Network Communications Solutions RFI, L3Harris, HPUE
APCO 2021 The APCO 2021 conference is taking place in San Antonio this week. Many attendees come from the public-safety community or are involved in some way with public-safety communications….
T-Mobile discloses data breach after SIM swapping attacks
The editorial staff at All Things FirstNet has posted this article to inform public safety of what can happen within networks and why it is important to ensure public safety…
Augment Your ARES® Mission with FirstNet®
By Randy Richmond, W7HMT In March 2018, the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network known as First Responder NetworkAuthority, in contract with AT&T, was launched as FirstNet®, the first nationwide 4G…
DNR moves to smartphone-based body cameras
More than a decade ago, the game wardens in Georgia’s woodlands and waterways started wearing body cameras. “We felt like it was important that we get into the 21st century and be…
Corrata Earns FirstNet Listed Designation
FirstNet Subscribers Can Now Access Corrata via the FirstNet App Catalog PHILADELPHIA, July 8, 2020 — Following a rigorous review process, Corrata is now FirstNet® Listed and accessible via the FirstNet App…