The FirstNet Authority Roadmap establishes technology priorities across a range of areas including capacity and coverage, voice communications, data security and situational awareness. Its authors say the document is intended to further the ongoing conversation between FirstNet and the emergency response community.
“We wanted to find a way to have dialog about critical aspects of the network, the particular platforms that public safety uses, so that the end users can understand the direction that we want to go,” said Jeremy Zollo, executive director of FirstNet’s Enterprise Strategy Division.
Built in partnership with AT&T, FirstNet went live a year ago. AT&T announced this month that nearly 9,000 public safety agencies have subscribed to FirstNet, accounting for over 750,000 connections.
“The vision for FirstNet is really coming to fruition,” said Stacy Schwartz, AT&T’s vice president of public safety and FirstNet. “We all need to be connected, from the police department to the fire department to the person in the ER. They all need to be on the network for the vision to be realized, and these numbers tell us that we are getting there.”
Still, the network remains very much a work in progress, and Zollo described the new roadmap as a means to help ensure public safety agencies can actively participate in its future development. “The roadmap puts them in the driver’s seat,” he said. “These are the things that they have told us are important to them, and they are going to help us now to take on these challenges.”
High priority
The roadmap highlights six high-priority “domains,” areas that appear ripe for potential investment in the near term:- Network Core: This delivers the essential intelligence that drives network functionality.
- Coverage and Capacity: First responders have put a heavy emphasis on the need to have robust and ubiquitous access to the network.
- Situational Awareness: The future network should support real-time access to critical information.
- Voice Communications: FirstNet says it will deliver high-quality, reliable voice communications nationwide across analog and digital platforms.
- Secure Information Exchange: Users should be able to securely access, exchange, and manage data within and across public safety agencies and jurisdictions.
- User Experience: Public safety has expressed a keen interest in ensuring ease of use in the face of complex operational challenges.
More ‘deployables’
One key area that will likely receive attention in the near term is the expanded use of “deployables,” portable cells that can be used to deliver FirstNet capacity on an as-needed basis. FirstNet already has 75 of these in use and is likely to expand that footprint.“Deployables have had a high impact when used, and enhancing the fleet with more and a wider variety of solutions will improve accessibility and effectiveness for public safety operations,” the roadmap states.
Zollo points to this as a prime example of the strong working relationship between FirstNet and public safety. Originally viewed by some as a nice extra among FirstNet’s offerings, portable capacity has emerged as a favorite feature among early users.
“They are using these assets and finding things we had not foreseen,” Zollo said. “They are using [the portables] for coverage in places where they don’t have it. They are using them for capacity at large events. It’s given them faster throughput and greatly expanded coverage. We want to capitalize on that and continue to mature that program.”
User feedback helped to bring deployables to the top of the to-do list. Zollo said FirstNet is looking to the roadmap as a way to inspire further, deeper conversations. “We’ve given them a path forward for how we will improve the network and grow it, and we expect to work hand in hand on implementing that plan,” he said.
The plan also represents a sort of milestone, in that it offers a clear indication of how FirstNet intends to go forward now that it is a revenue-generating entity.
“We now have dollars that are flowing back into us through the contract with AT&T, and so for the first time we will be making decisions around advancing the network beyond the initial buildout,” Zollo said. “This is when public safety starts to see their dollars translate into tangible results in the network.”
Meanwhile, AT&T this month released metrics detailing how far FirstNet adoption has come to date.
The company noted that the FirstNet Band 14 spectrum has been deployed in nearly 650 markets nationwide, and that public safety officials have leveraged the network for communications during 175 planned and emergency events this year, including wildfires, floods, and major concerts and festivals.
AT&T’s Schwartz said that in the immediate future, the network will likely come to embrace organizations beyond the frontline police and fire departments that have been FirstNet’s main point of emphasis thus far.
“We initially spent our time on police, fire, emergency medical, and there is a high adoption rate there already,” she said. “Now we are seeing transport companies, medical centers, individual ER technicians signing on. We are seeing airlines and tree removal services, all the different groups within the emergency operations plan.”
