This segment of my ongoing series about building the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) will focus on the elements needed for the network itself from the eNodeBs (cell sites) through backhaul, to the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), which is the heart of the network. Without all of these elements properly deployed and operational, the network will not function and devices that are supposed to connect to it will not be able to do so.

This article is based on the current state of LTE as it is being deployed within commercial networks around the world. In the future there may, in fact, be some enhancements that might address some of the issues I am raising, but they are still being worked on in standards bodies such as 3GPP, or they are ideas and thoughts about how to remedy some of the issues. FirstNet must move forward with this network and we must be realistic about what is available today verses what may or may not become available in the future. Therefore, my comments are based on LTE as it is today and what has already been accepted and designed by the standards bodies—not what some may see on the horizon.

First, it is imperative that both the Public Safety community and those involved in commercial LTE deployments understand the key differences between Land Mobile Radio (LMR) as used by Public Safety and LTE broadband networks. The most important differences include the following:

1. LMR networks and devices are designed to be able to function in several fallback modes. The networks can be degraded and still operate, the devices can change modes of operation, and when there is no network available, either due to network failure or being out of range of the network, the LMR devices can be used for one-to-many simplex or peer-to-peer off-network communications.
2. The brains of an LTE network reside within the network and, to some extent, at the edges of the network and in the devices themselves. The devices are 100% reliant on the network being up and operating and if the network fails or users are out of range, the LTE devices they are carrying will not be able to communicate; not even to another device a short distance away. Therefore, the LTE network must be built with this premise in mind: If there is a failure in the network, the devices will no longer be able to communicate.
3. Further, if an individual LTE cell site loses connectivity with the network, users within that cell site’s coverage won’t be able to communicate with anyone.
4. If the connectivity to the LTE EPC is disrupted, e.g., if there is a power failure or a cell site is damaged, the area covered by that cell site or group of sites will not have network access. Once again, the field devices will not function.
5. Using LTE deployables to fill in these gaps during times of failure or network overload is an option. However, they must be transported to the area of the incident and they must have access to the network by some means—fiber, microwave, or satellite. Since time is a critical element during major incidents or disasters, relying on deployables to solve connectivity problems may not be realistic.
6. LMR systems make use of high-powered base stations, mobile units, and portable radios. LTE systems use moderate-powered base stations (eNodeBs) and very-low-powered devices (usually less than ¼ of a watt). LMR devices have some form of external antenna while today’s LTE devices have antennas embedded into them. The difference in RF transmission and reception capabilities is significant.
7. LMR coverage area on a per-tower or site basis is much greater than that of an LTE cell site. Further, many LMR systems include additional receive-only sites to enhance the talkback range of the LMR radios.
8. Many LMR systems have supervisory override so control can be taken of the voice channel if needed. There are various Quality of Service and priority levels with LTE but it does not appear that priority access is always available depending on the circumstances.
9. LMR voice systems provide voice capabilities throughout the coverage area of the system. LTE networks and devices have different data rates and capacity characteristic depending on how far devices are from the center of the cell site. The further the LTE device is from the cell center, the less data capacity and speed there is available to the device.

This is a partial list of the differences between LMR and LTE systems, but for our purposes it is sufficient to point these out and then to address what LTE can do as well as what it cannot. While these differences are significant, the NPSBN offers capabilities that are either not available to first responders today or that are only partially available by using existing commercial networks. Note that commercial networks do not offer any form of priority to the Public Safety community and they tend to become overloaded and unusable for first responders during major events such as the Boston Bombings, Hurricane Sandy, major fires, accidents, and incidents that cover large or small areas where demand for commercial services is heavy.

Public Safety needs this new network, but it must be as robust and reliable as we can make it. The more I work with LTE experts, the more I am convinced that it will be a very long time, if ever, before there are enough fallback and other capabilities built into this system to assure that it is as robust and reliable as today’s LMR networks. Recently, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) published a document about voice over LTE networks. This document is worth reading and passing along to elected officials. So my view of this new network is that it will serve Public Safety well and it will become more robust and failure-resistant over time, but it will be years before I would ever recommend decommissioning existing LMR systems.

The Architecture

LTE is an all Internet Protocol (IP)-based network. From the user device to the core of the network and beyond, the data and video sent over it is encapsulated in packets. The back-end of the system (the EPC) is made up of a number of computers, switches, and routers. Perhaps one of the best ways to understand how it functions is to track a request for services through the network:

A user in the field or dispatch center initiates a request for a data or video session across the network. This request can be to send information to another user, or hopefully in the near future, to a group of users, or to request access to a database or even to the Internet. The device sends out a request for network connection. The closest eNodeB receives the request and routes it to specific computers within the EPC. At that point, the user is verified, the request is processed, and it is sent on to its destination.

This is an over-simplification of what transpires in a fraction of a second but it does describe the actions taken by the user and then how the network handles and processes the request. The computers within the EPC can also verify the network priority level of the user, the data rate capability of the device (determined by its signal strength into the network), and even the type of device and its display capabilities. All of this is important information used in sending the requested information back to the device in the correct format.

For the duration of the session, if the device is moving from one cell to another the network tracks these movements and hands off the session to another cell site, keeping the session alive. During the session the user may move from a prime coverage area with access to the full capabilities of the network to an area that is further away from the center of the cell. The network will adjust the unit’s transmit power and change the data rate to compensate for a weaker signal to and from the device. While all of this is happening, the device and the network are talking to each other to ensure that the session is handled properly, that any dropped packets are quickly retransmitted, and that the session is completed.

Issues Faced by FirstNet

• How many eNodeBs (cell sites) will be needed to cover the United States?
  • How many will be needed within a specific city, county, or region to be able to cover the geography and handle the load on the network? LTE capacity is a function of how many users there are in a single cell sector or site. Where demand will be heaviest, more cells will need to be built closer together.
• How many EPC or cores will be built and placed where within the network? For the sake of redundancy, more than one will be needed, but what is the correct number? Further, how far will the nearest core be from a major metro area?
  • If the nearest core to Los Angeles, New York, or other major metro area is a thousand or more miles away, and even if the backhaul is redundant fiber connections, there is the possibility of a communications failure between the core and the city. If this happens, and Los Angeles, for example, loses connectivity with the core, we would have on the order of 180 useless cell sites and no service in that area until connectivity was reestablished. I believe that in addition to the nationwide core(s), we may need to permit major metro and regional areas to install their own cores, closer to their own area of operation. More than a year ago there was a sub-committee of waiver recipients that analyzed this issue and concluded that multiple cores could be employed. The recommendation was that in addition to the nationwide core(s), if a given area wanted to have its own core it would have to fund its operation and its integration into the network. I am in full agreement on both points.
• What sites will be selected? Will they all be commercial sites or will FirstNet also employ some key Public Safety sites as well?
  • My belief is that wherever possible, FirstNet should use Public Safety sites first and then use commercial sites to fill in coverage and capacity as needed. If the system is designed to use the usually more hardened Public Safety sites and there are failures at the commercial sites, there would at least be a backbone of key sites over which users could communicate. Many commercial sites already have shared towers and facilities with all network operators, so if there is a failure and a site(s) is not working, none of the commercial operators would have service. If the NPSBN is also located on these sites, Public Safety will lose service to the same geographic area. I know FirstNet does not have a lot of money for this network but it can make wise choices, for example, in my area, the same hilltop or mountaintop hosts a county installation and a commercial cell site installation. In cases like this, I believe that the location of the eNodeBs should be on the Public Safety site—not on the commercial site.
  • Commercial networks are designed with at least three levels of sites depending upon the population they serve and the area they cover. Top-level sites are full-blown sites with back-up batteries and generators. Second and third tier sites are used to fill in for capacity and coverage. Many times these sites do not have the same power back-up capabilities since the main sites can, in times of failure, provide some basic coverage for sites that are out of commission. By balancing Public Safety and commercial sites, FirstNet should be able provide even better coverage during times of disaster.

Priority Access

Next up is perhaps one of the most important aspects of this network. I am assuming here that in order to afford this network, FirstNet will rely heavily on commercial network partners and piggyback on their facilities, use their backhaul where needed, and in other ways maximize the commercial network operators’ assets. I see no way around this, and in return, the network operators will be able to use NPSBN excess capacity to help manage their own networks and demand for services. However, as I wrote in a recent article for Urgent Communications, I have some serious concerns about network sharing. This started as a discussion among a group of us about sharing the network with commercial users and the requirement that some form of absolute and pre-emptive priority be given to the Public Safety community.

Unlike commercial networks where capacity can be predicted (e.g., Times Square before and after the theater), incidents that will require first responders and where they will occur cannot be predicted. A quiet neighborhood can suddenly erupt in a major incident as easily as in a known trouble area of a city. A major accident can occur along any stretch of highway anywhere in the nation, and hurricanes, tornadoes, and wild fires can hit almost anywhere. Therefore, when planning excess capacity availability, FirstNet must ensure that there really is a way for Public Safety to gain full and immediate access to all of the network capacity at any time in any area of their operation.

In the Urgent article, I started with the premise that the cellular networks in Boston after the bombings had been shut down, which was an early assumption that was not correct. However, what did happen was that the networks were so overloaded with traffic that it appeared to many that they were not operational and thus must have been shut down. The result was the same. The public, reporters, and Public Safety did not have assured access to any of the commercial networks.

The next logical point was to wonder whether commercial network customers who would have sharing rights with the Public Safety network would have been moved to the NPSBN, thus adding to its congestion. Moreover, if the commercial networks had been shut down to foil a bomber’s attempt to set off a bomb using cellular technology, would the NPSBN have been shut down too, just when it was needed the most, because it had commercial users on it?

Based on these discussions, I went back to a committee of LTE experts that is run by a very smart consultant. This is a unique committee made up of some of the best LTE engineering minds in the nation. Members of this group work for different, competing companies. They have come together for the benefit of the Public Safety community and have shared their expertise with many organizations including the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, the waiver recipients, and the APCO broadband committee. They give freely of their time and as a group they are involved in every phase of LTE from working with the standards bodies to working with their own companies and thus with the network operators. They have studied and learned as much as they can about LTE, and in some cases have been involved with LTE before it became a standard. So after my discussions, I decided to ask this group to comment on two assumptions that need to be answered in order to ensure that Public Safety will, in fact, have complete and total access to the NPSBN whenever and wherever it is needed. The two assumptions I started with were:

Assumption #1: If the signaling channel is overloaded, a User (UE) with maximum priority and pre-emptive rights may not be able to access the network.

The short answer: This is essentially a true statement, especially in a network that is shared with commercial users.

Assumption #2: LTE provides a way around this problem (as stated in Assumption #1) that can be implemented to ensure full priority access when needed.

The Short Answer: Mitigation tools exist in the 3GPP standards, but due to a wide range of potential scenarios and causes, to characterize this as solved would be an over-simplification.

The team’s full report will be made available in the near future but the bottom line is this:

Using today’s LTE, if the signaling channel for an eNodeB or group of eNodeBs receives too many requests for connection, the signaling channel (RACH) will, in fact, become overloaded and the eNodeB will not even know that a user with any level of priority is trying to access the network. Further, if a number of eNodeBs all have their signaling channel overloaded, it is also possible that the part of the core network that processes priority service requests will be overloaded and will not be able to process the requests.

Are there solutions on the horizon? The group concluded this was perhaps the case, but as mentioned at the beginning of this segment, we need to deal with what is here and available today, having some faith that enhancements will be developed over time, passed by the standards bodies, tested, and proven to mitigate some of the issues. In the meantime, it will be important for FirstNet to find ways to load-balance the network between Public Safety and secondary users. This information should be used to balance the amount of secondary traffic on the network with the need for Public Safety’s absolute need to access the network at any given time.

How to Proceed

What all of the above means is that the number of secondary users permitted on the network will need to be carefully controlled. While this may, to some degree, limit FirstNet’s ability to convince commercial network partners to contribute fully to the construction of the network, we must be careful to keep its primary purpose in the forefront. This network is to be a nationwide broadband network for the Public Safety community. I am hopeful that there will be a way to turn off access to the NPSBN for secondary users when the capacity is needed for Public Safety. The issue, I believe, will be more political than technical and some form of agreement will have to be put in place so that full access to all of the network capacity can be quickly and easily assigned to the Public Safety community on an as-needed basis.

During an incident such as the Boston Bombings, the number of Public Safety users will increase rapidly. It will start with local law enforcement, fire, and EMS responders, but soon federal agencies will arrive, other first responders from out of the area will descend on the scene, and the number of Public Safety users on the NPSBN in and around the incident area will grow quickly. By the same token, if the commercial networks are jammed, and they have access to the NPSBN for overflow traffic, some way of curtailing that access will be required. Further, in major metro areas I am not at all sure that anyone can predict how much of the spectrum will be available for sharing at any given point in time. Perhaps it makes more sense to enter into partnerships in suburban and rural areas and use the federal funds to build out the major metro areas. Once the network is operational and populated, we can see what types of devices and applications come to be, and we will have a track record for Public Safety usage in large metro areas. Then the issue of sharing spectrum in these areas can be revisited.

Considering the number of first responders across the country—which is, indeed, a small number of network users compared to commercial network users—it is, I am sure, easy to believe that there should be plenty of available spectrum for secondary users most of the time, and this may, in fact, be true. However, the issue for Public Safety is that when there is an incident, even a bank robbery, a hostage situation, or multiple-car accident, the number of first responders within a small geographic area will increase dramatically. Unless there is a way to ensure full and complete access to the first responder community, secondary users could take up needed bandwidth. How many incidents occur in a given metro area on a daily basis? The number is known within the local jurisdictions but, of course, their locations are not known in advance. The safe course of action then, is to limit the number of secondary users permitted to share the spectrum within the major metro areas and re-evaluate spectrum usage after Public Safety has some experience with the network and usage patterns.

The $7 Billion Public Safety is supposed to receive from the incentive spectrum auctions is certainly not enough to build out the network, thus partners will be needed. However, FirstNet must ensure that where secondary usage is permitted, first responders come first 100% of the time. Speaking about funding, we need to think about where the money is coming from because there are other actions by the federal government that could jeopardize that funding. The $7 Billion allocated in the ACT is based on the proceeds from the Incentive auctions for TV spectrum. Unlike many laws, there are no provisions for a secondary source of funding. The auctions are sure to raise the money when spectrum is in demand from commercial network operators large and small, right? Well, there are a few issues that could come into play and over which the Public Safety community has little or no control.

When the spectrum is auctioned, the TV stations that agreed in the reverse auction to vacate the spectrum will receive the first portion of the revenue. The auctions are supposed to generate between $25 and $28 Billion but there is a danger for Public Safety that they will not generate this level of revenue. Recently, the Department of Justice recommended to the FCC that both AT&T and Verizon be precluded from bidding on this spectrum. The reason stated was that these two networks already own the bulk of the spectrum below 1 GHz. If the FCC agrees with the DOJ, fewer companies may show up to bid, and they may not be able to pay higher prices for the spectrum. The result could be an auction that does not raise enough money to pay the TV stations and fund the $7 Billion that is to be diverted to Public Safety, let alone feed the government’s coffers. A recent economic analysis of the impact these bidding restrictions will have in funding confirms that, in fact, there could be 40% less money raised at auction, which will certainly have an impact on the funding of FirstNet. Therefore, the issue of funding won’t be settled until the Incentive auction dollars are tallied. If the auction does not bring in sufficient funding for the network, Public Safety will, once again, have to walk the halls of Congress looking for new funding sources. With today’s focus on federal spending, that could be a long, hard-fought battle.

FirstNet must plan as though this money is forthcoming, and the ACT did advance FirstNet the first $2 Billion from the U.S. Treasury as an interest-free loan, so there is money, if used wisely, to leave the starting line and move part way down the field. The auction results and working with partners are both crucial to the success of the NPSBN. While there are many technical challenges ahead for the network, there are even more financial issues to work out.

Cyber Security

In this installment I intended to cover the cyber security requirements for this network in detail. However, this is such an important topic that I will offer a brief discussion of the requirements here and follow up with a much more detailed discussion in the next part of this series. The bottom line is that this network must be the most secure wireless network ever built. Security must be planned into every aspect of the network from the beginning and the plans for including security must be vetted not only by the cyber security experts within several federal organizations, many having three initials, but also by those who provide security products and software in the public sector.

There are many aspects to a secure network, and the Internet provides a way in. As we are all aware, the Internet is the conduit for all manner of attacks on networks: denial of service, breaking into databases, stealing credit card and banking information, breaking into websites, and much more. Many public companies have been the target of such attacks, and many government sites and databases have been compromised. There are those, both inside the United States and in other countries, who hack anything and everything they can reach via the Internet. It is a game of cat and mouse. The bad guys hack a site or enter a database, we find out how and plug the hole, and they find another way in. The bottom line is that security of the network will require ongoing attention and people who monitor the network for attempts and fend them off.

The NPSBN will be capable of accessing criminal records and other information that is protected by federal and state laws. This information must be protected no matter what and we will need several different layers of security for this network. The first will be securing access to the basic LTE network, which will be made more difficult because it will be shared with non-Public Safety users. Then we must assure that the databases being accessed are secure, that the applications being used are secure, and that the devices in the field are also secure. If a police car or other vehicle with a laptop in it that is connected to the network is stolen, how will the laptop and thus the network be secured?

The devices will have to be capable of being wiped remotely, which is common practice today, and there should be a way to instantly block a device from the network if it is missing or stolen. There are some who will try to hack this network either for fun or for serious disruption, and this will be made easier with so many commercial devices capable of using the NPSBN in the hands of secondary users.

I am sure that the FirstNet technical team is aware of all of this and more and is working with all of the proper agencies and commercial experts to stay one step ahead of the bad guys or teenagers who want to hack the network just to see if they can. One of the issues with adding multiple layers of security on the network is that there will be an overhead associated with each level of security that is added. How will all of this security be implemented in such a way as not to slow down law enforcement’s access to data when needed?

A careful analysis will be needed to determine how much of the available network capacity will be eaten up with these security measures. This is an area that deserves special attention from all of the experts in the field. In my opinion, the number of connection points to the Internet must be limited and the network must be able to be disconnected from the Internet within seconds to stop any attack coming via the Internet. This too will require careful planning. I am sure that most jurisdictions assume that their portion of the network will be connected to their existing Internet connection, but this would create problems for the network. Therefore, FirstNet must enforce some types of rules about who can connect to the Internet and how all of these connections can be dropped if and when necessary. It is better to have a functioning network that has no outside connectivity for a while than to leave the network open for additional attacks. There are lessons to be learned from the power companies and others that have multiple connections to the Internet and have no means of disconnecting their network during an attack.

Backhaul

The NPSBN network is wireless only for the “last mile.” The rest of the network will be made up of fiber and microwave connections. Each cell site will need to be connected with high-speed fiber and/or microwave circuits to the network. The various pieces and parts of the network must be connected to each other, and there must be as much redundancy as possible. I don’t believe that it is either practical or affordable to require that each cell site have two separate fiber or microwave connections to the network. However, some primary sites could certainly be designed in such a way. Further, since the network will be nationwide, the transport used across the country will vary from location to location. Looking at commercial networks we see a mixture of network-owned connections and those leased from a third party. In my county, AT&T is leasing fiber from Verizon because AT&T does not have its own fiber. The city has its own fiber so it might be a good resource for additional connectivity, but we are prone to earthquakes so it might make sense to make use of fiber, microwave, or both as the county does with its LMR systems.

When commercial operators order fiber for their cell sites they rate the capacity of the fiber needed based on a formula for site activity. If the site is capable of, for example, 34 Mbps per sector down to the devices, that should mean they need to install fiber capable of 3 times 34, or 102 megabits. Most sites I have seen don’t have fiber with the full potential of the site but they do have 60-80% of the potential maximum. This works for commercial sites but in major metro areas, at least, this may not work for the Public Safety network where an entire site’s capacity might be needed during a single incident. Not having enough backhaul introduces a potential choke point that could limit the potential capacity. Further, since it is my belief, shared by others, that the NPSBN will demonstrate a 180-degree difference in data handling when compared with commercial networks—there will be more data sent from the devices in the field than to them—capacity planning becomes even more critical.

If there are secondary users on the network, how will the backhaul break out the Public Safety and non-Public Safety data, or will it all simply ride on the same fiber? When the data is being moved to the EPC, will it be in Public Safety-only fiber or will that fiber be shared with commercial customers? Will the network operators that partner with FirstNet provide their own fiber connections when the NPSBN eNodeB is located on one of their cell sites? If so, where will it be split off and routed to the NPSBN EPC? Planning this type of network is a daunting task. Planning the network to be shared by Public Safety and secondary, non-Public Safety users adds several more levels of complexity. This is one reason that it is vital that Public Safety have visibility into all aspects of the network design and that those on the commercial side that are working on the network design seek out Public Safety input and vet their thinking in terms of the needs of the Public Safety community.

Conclusions

The NPSBN is the most ambitious nationwide network ever undertaken in the United States and it is different from the public commercial networks in many aspects. First and foremost, it must provide the capabilities needed by the Public Safety community, and it must be more reliable. It presents many technical and financial issues that need to be addressed, and it will be a work-in-progress for a number of years to come. For those who expect this network to be ready quickly, I will say that it cannot be rushed. There are, as you have seen, many moving parts, each of which is dependent on a number of others. Some who come from the world of IT believe that since LTE is a technology based on the Internet Protocol it is easier to build and manage. However, commercial network operators will all tell you the same thing: It is an extremely complex architecture. The spectrum at each site is reused in its entirety at all of the other sites. In some ways, those with experience in simulcast LMR systems will have some appreciation of what needs to happen in the planning stages. In a simulcast network, the areas of overlapping coverage must be managed and tweaked until they are right; if not, the result will be garbled voice.

LTE systems must be designed to minimize interference between cell sites. New sites cannot simply be inserted without careful planning and a lot of advanced work because the addition of a new site could cause interference to existing sites. Moving sites and bringing in portable and temporary sites needs to be managed, and all of the pieces have to fit together. It is also important to realize that the NPSBN and other LTE-based networks are a combination of smarts: in the devices, in the cell sites, and at the core of the network. All of these pieces must function together in order for the system to operate correctly and there are more points of failure for a system like this than in most typical LMR systems. Further, if there are failures, the devices simply won’t work. There is no fallback mode or work-around. If a site or multiple sites are down or overloaded, the result is the same—the system will not function in that area.

The Evolved Packet Core is the heart of the system. It must be redundant, and hardened, there must be more than one, and they all must share information back and forth on a real-time basis. If some major jurisdictions are permitted to house their own cores, and I believe they should be permitted to do so, these too must be integrated into the overall network. Backhaul must be robust and redundant wherever possible and emergency power must be provided to every aspect of the network. Security is a critical element of this network and as mentioned, having secondary users on the same network as Public Safety will introduce new challenges.

Still this can be done. The NPSBN can be successful and it can bring to Public Safety capabilities it never before had. We cannot be in a hurry; we must get it right the first time. One of my favorite expressions is, “Why is there always time to do something over but never time to do it right the first time?” I believe that this applies here to a large degree and everyone involved—FirstNet, PSCR, NTIA, the FCC, Public Safety, commercial network operators, and everyone else—must work together to make it happen and do it right the first time.

Andrew M. Seybold

The document is attached in a PDF file and may also be access at www.npstc.org. The reason this document needs to be widely distributed is that many of us who have been working on this broadband network are receiving telephone calls and emails from elected officials and some within the Public Safety community asking why LMR systems must be maintained since they assume LMR will be replaced by the broadband network.

This document was prepared by the APCO Broadband Committee, and APCO sent it on to NPSTC for final revisions and publication. Please make sure you provide this document to any and all elected officials you may come in contact with as well as others within the Public Safety community who may not understand that the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network is focused on providing for the addition of data and video services to Public Safety and NOT replacing existing LMR networks.

Andrew Seybold

Why Can’t PS Just Use Cell Phones-NPSTC 041513 (2)

This segment of the series on building the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) will focus on user devices, network access from the field, and the type of services I believe the network should provide on day one as well as into the future. The success of this network will depend upon the types of devices, how easy they are to use, the types of applications that will run on them, and fast and reliable access to the network.

Network Access

Starting with network access, the stated plan is to include partners to help fund the network construction and operation but to give Public Safety true pre-emptive access to the network at all times. This is a worthy goal, however, there are some technical issues that will need to be addressed in order for this type of sharing to occur and still give Public Safety immediate access to the network on a 24/7 basis. Pre-emptive access means that a Public Safety user who needs bandwidth will be given that access even if it means terminating an active session originated by a user with secondary status. As I understand it, this secondary user will first have bandwidth and data speeds throttled back, and then if necessary, will be kicked off the network. This of course would upset the secondary user but even today calls are often dropped or terminated on commercial networks.

The primary technical challenge with this approach is that in order for Public Safety users with pre-emptive rights to gain access to the network, they first must gain access to the network’s signaling channel so that the network knows they are trying to establish a session. If the signaling channel is overloaded with requests for service, there is a possibility that a Public Safety user will not be able to register on the network and, therefore, the network will not even know that a pre-emptive request has been made. When is the signaling channel likely to be overloaded? The answer is when there is an incident, usually within a single cell sector, in which the public and the press also have an interest.

We have this situation today with commercial networks. You might recall the East Coast earthquake a few years back. It was centered in Virginia and was not large enough to cause any real damage, but it did disrupt voice, data, and texting across all of the commercial networks. The networks were up and running (I don’t know of a single failure during or after the earthquake) but everyone was trying to access the networks to make calls, send messages, and send pictures, thus the networks’ signaling channels were overloaded. As a consequence, access to any of the networks was hit and miss.

Another example is the Wireless Priority Services (WPS) phone service across the wireless networks. This system is designed to give priority voice access to those who are registered and need it. However, the WPS system is very rarely used because if you cannot access the network, the network has no idea that you are trying to make a priority call.

Is there a solution for this? So far I have not heard of one and I have talked to a dozen or more very smart LTE engineers. Hopefully this is a recognized issue and is being addressed. Perhaps one solution might be to restrict the number of secondary users on the network or to come up with a way that when needed, the commercial, secondary users of this spectrum are routed back to their home networks and taken off the Public Safety network until the spectrum is made available again. How often will this occur? That is anybody’s guess at this point, but it will happen during incidents that are confined to a single cell sector or perhaps several sectors in major cities, and it will be limited to those cell sectors. However, during a major storm or other disaster, the problem could be much more widespread. So for now, pre-emption of the network is not a 100% certainty.

Next is the type of services that will be offered when the network is first turned on. When we were walking the halls of Congress during our campaign to obtain this spectrum, our premise was that this network would AUGMENT and not replace current Public Safety voice networks. This National Public Safety Broadband Network was intended to be used for data and video services to assist first responders in being better prepared, having more access to information they need, to be able to track and solve crimes faster, coordinate fire responses, and for the EMS community to be able to provide more in the field life-saving services. However, what has happened since the law was passed and FirstNet was formed is that many elected officials, who use cell phones every day and who have never used a two-way or land mobile radio, believe that this network will also become the only network Public Safety will need for voice, data, and video services.

Unfortunately, a number of equipment and network vendors have jumped on this bandwagon and are touting voice solutions that they claim can be incorporated into the network on day one. Add to this the fact that Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) in Boulder has engaged with the LTE standards body to make some changes to the standards to provide additional voice services, and what we have ended up with is the expectation that this new broadband network will be all things to all people—first responders, secondary users, and secondary users’ customers. The good news is that while the PSCR is, in fact, working with the LTE standards body, it realizes that there is a difference between affecting a standard and having field proven voice communications, and that these two are a long way apart. Many within the Public Safety community are working on a simple, easy-to-understand document that will point out why voice across this network won’t happen for Public Safety use (it will not be mission-critical) for a very long time.

Today the only voice over LTE is being provided by Metro PCS while Verizon and AT&T are still working on solutions. One issue that has been discussed is that after adding dial-up voice to the device, its battery life is really poor. It is improving, but if we want devices that will last for a full shift and beyond, moving forward with voice services before the battery issues are solved would be a mistake.

One more aspect that must be taken into consideration is that when and if voice becomes viable across this network, dial-up voice will require absolute priority[1] on the network because it is VoIP and therefore the packets must be delivered in a timely and consistent manner. This means that the more dial-up voice there is on the network, the less network capacity there is available for data and video, which is the primary reason for the NPSBN in the first place. If we add push-to-talk (PTT) and there is a standard for which PTT technology is added, there is also a question about the amount of bandwidth taken up keeping live PTT units on the network. Some of the technologies being touted, which at this point are all proprietary, require each device that is active to be assigned some bandwidth even when not transmitting, which could also diminish the amount of capacity for data and video services. Therefore it is my conclusion that when the NPSBN is first deployed, no voice of any form should be allowed.

We don’t really know how much capacity will be available for voice or even for secondary customers on the network. If we assume that the network will be able to handle whatever is put onto it, we could end up with a network that is often overloaded and, therefore, not as reliable as Public Safety wants and needs. If we go back to the primary purpose of this network, which is for data and video services to augment Public Safety LMR voice, logic says that we should first build the network for only data and video services. After we have some experience with network loading, applications, and video management, we can then look at what other services can be added to the network without impacting its primary function.

Devices

Many vendors are working diligently at designing and building devices for use on this network. The original FirstNet vision is that any device on the network must be capable of:

1. Public Safety LTE network
2. Fallback to LTE/3G on four commercial networks
3. Fallback to satellite where none of the LTE network is available

Each device should also have:

• GPS
• Bluetooth
• Wi-Fi (suggest 4.9-GHz Public Safety licensed spectrum only)

I am not in agreement with this type of device for a number of reasons. First, one of the main purposes for choosing LTE was to provide devices that are more affordable than those currently in use on LMR voice systems. If we require each and every device on the network to include all of the above, we will end up with special devices. This will add to the cost, cut down the number of vendors that will build them, and prevent Public Safety from having the best choices for the first responder population. My belief is that we should leave at least the satellite portion out of the radios. We can provide access to satellites by mounting cheaper satellite units in vehicles where needed, and use 4.9-GHz Public Safety spectrum to communicate between the device and the vehicle.

Satellite services will be used only where it is not practical to build out the LTE network, such as in rural parts of the United States, but they won’t be practical in devices used in major cities where there is no clear view to the sky. I am skeptical about having five terrestrial networks built into each device, but perhaps it makes sense if we can acquire devices that are priced right. One issue I have with this is that many cell sites host all of the networks, so if that cell site is down all of the networks within that coverage area are down as well. Further, I am not sure how handoffs will occur from one network to another while maintaining data sessions. I have been told that this is possible but that it makes the Public Safety flavor of LTE even more non-standard. Again, one of the main selling points for LTE was to conform to worldwide standards.

Today the PSCR is testing a variety of devices. It is great that we have an independent organization testing devices to make sure they will operate on the network as it is deployed. I have seen many different types of devices including mobile modems for use with existing laptops in vehicles, mobile modems capable of two networks (one commercial and the Public Safety Broadband Network), a number of hardened tablets, which I believe will be ideal for incident commanders and other commanders in the field, and now a new generation of handheld devices.

The model for these handheld devices appears to be smartphones already on the market using the Android or Apple operating system. This makes sense because these devices are built by the millions, but these devices are lacking for Public Safety service in at least one major way. In order to access and send data and video, two hands are needed—one to hold the device and the other to tap on the screen or use a stylus and tap on the screen. We have conducted some preliminary research in this area and talked with many first responders. While many of them use smartphones in the field today as a secondary or personal device, none of those we talked with would even consider using a two-handed device while on an incident. Law enforcement, fire, and EMS personnel will not tie up both hands to make use of these devices. They must be able to be used one-handed, at least for when they are being used during an incident.

One example we have been given is a simple traffic stop. Officers pull over a car for some infraction, use their voice radio to call in the plate, type of car, and location of the stop, or perhaps type one-handed on a mobile data terminal in their car, keeping their eyes on the stopped car and the driver. Once it is confirmed that there are no wants or warrants, or that the car is not stolen, the officer will approach the vehicle, tell the driver to keep both hands where they can be seen, and will make sure his or her gun hand is not encumbered. The officer will use one hand to look at the registration, license, and proof of insurance and then, generally, return to his or her own vehicle to write a ticket, again keeping one eye on the driver and the car.

In this case, officers won’t use a handheld device to record the plate and car information while standing at the driver’s door, nor will they encumber both of their hands while out of their own vehicle. Those who are and will be building these handhelds need to understand that these devices have to be simple to operate, capable of one-handed operation, and hardened to withstand the elements. I don’t believe that today’s smartphones are the correct model for these devices, or perhaps the usage model has to be different when officers are on an incident. It will be great when an officer in the field will simply swipe a driver’s license through a device and have it populate a form for a ticket or a report, but that probably will not be done while standing next to the stopped car.

Fire personnel wear gloves much of the time they are at a fire so most of the smartphones on the market today won’t be of much use to them and the odds of them removing a glove to touch a screen are slim to none. Perhaps the incident commander using a tablet will be comfortable using both hands to track the fire, track vehicles at the scene, respond to others, and see live video of the back of a burning building, but that remains to be seen.

We also have to be realistic about calling for help when needed. I don’t believe that law enforcement, fire personnel, or EMS providers who find themselves in trouble and need immediate assistance will turn to their LTE device to summon that help. Instead they will use the microphone on their LMR radio, or if they are unable to do that, they will push the red button on the radio to summon assistance. Once the alert has been sounded, those responding locate the person in trouble by using the GPS built into the LTE device, but that does not require any action on the part of the person needing help.

I think this first generation of handheld devices will end up being used in the field for routine information queries, to view information sent to them by dispatch, to complete reports during downtimes, and to make better use of their time in the field. I believe that in the beginning these devices will be used to receive updated information regarding an incident, and perhaps to shoot a picture or video and send it to dispatch and/or other responding units, but both of these functions will have to be able to be performed with one hand if these devices are to be used during an actual incident.

It is important for those building devices or intending to build devices to do the research to determine what types of devices are needed, what types of applications, and how these devices can be used to assist those in the field. I am a big believer in ride-alongs with Public Safety. They can prove to be very beneficial for both parties. There are significant differences in how these devices will be used during routine patrols or responses during relatively quiet periods and how they will be used on Friday and Saturday nights when there are multiple responses with multiple units involved. We have found in much of our research that talking about what someone wants and needs and giving them multiple devices they can touch and feel will yield totally different results. When working with corporate customers, we always recommend a series of beta tests with different devices, and with a broad range of field personnel. The information gathered during these tests is invaluable in building better devices that will serve the purpose for which they are intended and attention must be given to each of the three “F”s: Form, Function, and Fit.

While a great deal of work is being done on handheld devices, I am in favor of starting out with vehicle-mounted systems, progressing to tablets for incident commands, and slowly populating field personnel with handheld devices as we learn what types of devices best fit the various groups within the first responder community. This will be a challenge for both FirstNet and the device vendors as I don’t foresee a single handheld device—a one-size-fits-all device—across the diversity of the first responder community. This means that the quantities of each type of device might be more limited and, therefore, prices may be higher. One misconception I have run into concerns pricing expectations for the handheld devices. Most commercial devices on the market for consumers are subsidized by the network operator. For example, an iPhone from AT&T or Verizon would cost:

iPhone 5 (LTE) 16 GB device with two-year contract         $199.99
iPhone 5 (LTE) low-end with no contract                         $649.00

Since no one is about to underwrite the cost of a Public Safety device, we have to figure that these handhelds will be in the $700-$1,000 range. If we add satellite back into the mix, prices will be even higher. While these prices are lower than many LMR radios, they are still higher than some expect them to be. Bottom line is that we need to be careful about setting cost expectations. The fewer devices built, of course, the higher the cost per device. If FirstNet does enter into partnerships with network operators, that should increase the number of devices and, if operators are still offering subsidies, this might help. However, there is a trend being led by T-Mobile and some of the smaller network operators to do away with device subsidies. In reality, we won’t have any idea of the device pricing until we see what FirstNet does as far as partnerships are concerned.

It is clear that the cost of the devices and the monthly fee for using the network will be borne by the local agencies. If the monthly cost paid to FirstNet is $40 per month per device (a guess on my part), there is also the issue of how many devices a local organization puts on the network. For example, if a police car has a notebook computer onboard, that is $40 a month. If the officer in the car also has a device, the total monthly cost for that vehicle will be $80 per month, or $120 per month for a two-person car. The same will apply to fire and EMS vehicles and devices for individuals. This is another reason I think that most agencies will deploy vehicle-mounted devices first, add tablets for some senior field people, and only add on-person devices over time. This fee will probably not include the cost of using commercial networks where the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network is not available (to start) or if the NPSBN is congested and some traffic is off-loaded onto a commercial network or two.

Conclusions

Even with all of the issues I have detailed in this and the first two installments, this network is needed. It will cut response times, save lives, and make fieldwork easier with less desk time at the end of the shift. I am confidant that the FirstNet team will find solutions to these issues and that the result will be what we were after in the first place: a truly nationwide, fully interoperable data and video network. At some point in the future, administrative-grade voice services may be added, later perhaps mission-critical voice services, and even later still, perhaps off-network voice services. In the meantime, Land Mobile Radio systems are vital to Public Safety and must be kept in place, up-to-date, and even expanded. The Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network, in my estimation, is designed to augment LMR voice services and not replace them, at least not for a very long time.

There are obstacles to be overcome, but most of them will be overcome. Public Safety LTE is not only about the United States anymore. Public Safety is promoting LTE systems in most areas of the world including Canada, Latin and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Each new system will bring more savings to Public Safety LTE, new devices, and certainly new applications. Within ten years the Public Safety community will look back and wonder how it ever managed without this network, and as LTE is refreshed, refined, and enhanced, we will see even more advances that will benefit all Public Safety organizations around the world.

One thing we have to remember, especially when it comes to voice over LTE, is that there are two aspects to all of this. The first is the advances in technology that will be required to enable Public Safety to have a single network that will provide for data, video, AND mission-critical voice. Many within the technology community are bullish on voice over LTE but it is still a very long way from being a reality. Standards need to be set, the proper release of LTE needs to be made available, it needs to be vetted, tested, and re-tested, and it needs to be field proven before anyone should even consider pulling the plug on their LMR voice networks.

The second part of this is the most dangerous for Public Safety and that is the perceptions of non-technical people who are elected to positions in the federal, state, and local governments as well as those appointed to regulatory organizations. The T-Band giveback requirement in the law is a perfect example of what can happen when these elected officials want to believe something but don’t have the grounding or understanding to accurately assess the consequences of passing a law or making a ruling that would turn off funding for mission-critical voice networks. Because of their assumptions (not based on fact) that voice over LTE is in the immediate future for Public Safety, the LMR channels could be returned to the government for use by others, or to be converted to broadband spectrum.

We must be very careful that the technology community does not make blanket statements that can be wrongly construed. My advice for the technologists is to continue the good work they are doing but to tone down their technology assessments and predictions with the reality of the time involved and all of the processes and issues that must be addressed and solved, assuming they can be solved. Until then, the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network will remain about data and video, while today’s Land Mobile Radio networks are about mission-critical voice. Both networks will be needed for a very long time to come.

Andrew M. Seybold

FirstNet held its most recent Board of Directors meeting on February 12, 2013, in Boulder, Colorado. This meeting included a press conference and many more assurances for the Public Safety community that this network will be for Public Safety first and foremost, and that the requirements of the Public Safety community will take priority in its construction and operation. I was pleased to hear the FirstNet Chairman address something many within the Public Safety community have been concerned about. He stated emphatically that while the network would be built out on a nationwide basis, it would be designed to provide local agency control. This is a very important message for Public Safety because while the network will be fully interoperable nationwide, it will be used locally every day.

After publishing Part One of this series I received many comments, 99% of which were positive, including several from FirstNet members and people who work with FirstNet. I also received numerous suggestions for topics others feel I should cover in this series. These ranged from how we will afford this network to more about devices, applications, operation, and cyber security on this network. I received multiple comments about how secure this network will and must be, especially in light of the fact that so many government and business networks have been hacked recently. Information that will be transmitted over this network must comply with federal and local standards, and it must be secure and trusted since if the network were to be hacked, it could have catastrophic consequences. So as I determine what to include in this series, I will, in this part, concentrate on how the NPSBN can be built with the funding available, funding that may become available, and with partners that want to assist Pubic Safety in these efforts. I will save the cyber security discussion for a future topic.

Today, FirstNet has a loan of $2 billion from the U.S. Treasury with a promise of $5 billion more from future spectrum auctions. The timing of these auctions is in doubt as is the amount of money they will raise so it is unknown when, or even if, this additional $5 billion will become available to FirstNet. In the meantime, FirstNet is gearing up, working on network architecture, talking to potential partners, and beginning to meet with the states, territories, and tribes as mandated in the act. FirstNet also stated that it will work with local first responder communities to gather information, although I am not sure if this will be a duplication of the states’ mandate or if it will focus on other issues. For now, let’s take a look at the network and the funding that is available and that could become available.

FirstNet has to start with the fact that it only has $2 billion to begin with and some of that must go to building its organization, hiring employees and consultants, and possibly a project management firm. Building this network is a huge undertaking that will take many smart people who know about building cellular networks, and it must include people who understand both the politics and requirements of Public Safety. When you put this all in perspective, building this network is 25% about the technology, 50% about the funding, and 25% about the politics on a federal, state, and local level. All of these things must be taken into consideration.

One way to become really discouraged about the lack of sufficient funds is to look at what the commercial network operators have and are spending rolling out their own LTE networks. Verizon has been at it for several years, AT&T started a little later but is making great progress, and Sprint and T-Mobile are fast on their heels. All of these operators are building out their LTE networks using existing sites, power, and back-up systems, then adding either high-capacity microwave or fiber at each site in order to handle the increased capacity requirements. AT&T and Verizon have both stated that even with existing sites they have spent many $billions more on their LTE network roll-outs than what is available to Public Safety. This points out a couple of things that FirstNet is aware of and looking at: Who can Public Safety partner with that can bring money and in-kind services, locations, and more to the network? What is the spectrum worth, on a secondary basis, to these and perhaps other partners? What potential partners make the most sense? How do commercial operators, utility companies, and others fit into the scheme of things? Other considerations also have to be taken into account. How much spectrum will actually be available for secondary usage, when (if) voice is added to the network, how will that impact the amount of secondary spectrum that will be available, and will voice be available on a secondary basis as well? (Voice over LTE, when and if it happens, has the highest priority level of all network traffic in LTE so the amount of capacity it will consume must be calculated into the spectrum equation from the start.)

Next, while the Public Safety network is being built on the worldwide standard of LTE, it will be different from commercial networks in at least one important regard. The standards bodies have designed LTE to provide more capacity and more speed down from the cell site to the devices and less capacity and speed from the devices. This is in keeping with the Internet model where customers tend to download much more data, stream videos, and download webpages than they upload from their devices. Yes, they send pictures and an occasional video, but by and large the most traffic is in a downward direction, which comes from the cell site to the device. Public Safety, on the other hand, will most likely turn this model around. That is, there will be more data, video, and information sent from the devices back to command centers, Incident Commanders, and others while the amount of data and video sent to the devices will be less, and less often.

To put this in perspective, OpenSignal found that average LTE speeds on a 10X10-MHz network were 13 Mbps in the download direction while OpenSignal clocked Verizon’s download speed at 10 Mbps. While AT&T only states on its website that its LTE speeds are “10X faster than 3G speeds,” Verizon states that its download speeds will average 12-15 Mbps and its upload speeds will be 2-6 Mbps. The tests run by OpenSignal only measured the download speed but other tests have indicated that the upload speeds run about 50-60% of the download speeds. If Public Safety uses more capacity in the upload mode, then the congestion point will be in the upload direction where less capacity is available to begin with. If an incident occurs within a single cell sector (as most incidents do), the number of video streams and other data in the upload direction will be about 50% of the download capability, thus Public Safety will have to do a very good job of managing this capacity and bandwidth.

When it comes to spectrum sharing, the fact that most Public Safety data and video will be in the uplink direction certainly plays to network operators that need more capacity for downloading information to their customers. However, it also means that in major metro areas with multiple incidents during the day, the network uplink capacity will have to be monitored and well managed by Public Safety. It is still not clear to me if the intent is to provide true pre-emptive priority for Public Safety. Pre-emptive means that first responders could, in fact, knock a commercial user off the air in a given area or given cell sector in order to ensure that the first responders have the bandwidth they need available, when they need it. The bottom line here is that FirstNet and Public Safety need to be cautious about how much spectrum sharing will be permitted and where. The Public Safety usage of the network will only increase over time as new applications and new devices are brought online. We cannot afford to assume that simply because there is excess capacity on day one of the network’s operation that this capacity will remain available as the network grows in size and the number of users increases. FirstNet has stated that this network will also be available to federal agencies and we will need to keep in mind their capacity requirements as well. If this network had been up and running in the Big Bear area of California during the recent week-long manhunt, it is very possible that commercial operations in that area would have been disrupted for the entire week because of the number of law enforcement personnel in the area and the need to update them with video and images as the manhunt continued.

Also at issue is the fact that the further a device is from the center of a cell site, the slower the data speed is and the less capacity there is. Our tests reveal that an average cell sector that covers out to three miles from the center could provide the following data speeds:

Distance from Center of Cell              Download                            Upload

1.25 Miles                                       34 Mbps                              16 Mbps
2.00 Miles                                       25 Mbps                              12 Mbps
3.00 Miles (edge of cell)                   768 Kbps                             257 Kbps

The speeds listed above are based on the total potential capacity of a cell sector. AT&T and Verizon limit per-user capacity to provide for more users within a single cell sector having access to the shared capacity of that sector. As you can see from the above, the upload capacity and speed will have to be carefully managed. According to the Federal GAO report on data capacity and rates, an HD resolution video will require 3.5 Mbps of data capacity, while a typical video sent from an incident will require 1.2 Mbps of the total available capacity. So at the edge of the cell sector, only low-resolution video will be possible. If the system is designed correctly, the number of times that an incident occurs at the edge of a cell within a metro area will be minimized, but in suburban and rural areas, the edge-of-cell limitations will be more prevalent. This is why Public Safety may need to look at the type of Wi-Fi (4.9 GHz) vehicular repeaters mentioned in the first part of this series. A mobile unit in a rural area could make use of a higher-powered device for LTE, thereby increasing the data rate at the cell edge.

I am sure FirstNet is aware of all of this and the PSCR and NIST are reportedly running coverage models and capacity studies that will help determine the number of cell sites that will be required to provide true nationwide coverage. When the FCC released its white paper on costs for this network, it calculated that 41,600 cell sites would be required, yet AT&T and Verizon have many more sites up and running and they don’t cover many of the rural areas that need to be covered. Rightfully, FirstNet has stated that satellite communications will be needed to provide coverage in some of the truly rural areas where even with partners, it will be too expensive to build out Public Safety LTE coverage, but there are many areas where the addition of partners will make it more practical to build out the LTE network.

Partnering

As mentioned before, I am somewhat leery of taking on spectrum sharing partners in the top 50 markets until we know exactly what the Public Safety demand will be. If I were a commercial network operator, I would be cautious about how much access I would really have to the Public Safety spectrum in these top markets. However, it is obvious that in most rural areas and in suburban areas as well, partners will have access to a lot of the Public Safety spectrum, on a secondary basis. While I was working with the Public Safety Alliance helping to convince Congress to award Public Safety the entire 700-MHz spectrum that it will really need, one of the projects I worked on was to come up with a way to identify potential partners in rural America. What I set out to do was to target specific congressional districts where many of those living in the district had no access to any Internet connectivity or very slow Internet connectivity.

I should say at this point that when I created these business models, the commercial operators had not yet started building out their LTE networks except in major cities. Further, the rural networks had not been able to make deals with the major operators to share spectrum and the Rural Communications Association (now the CCA) was opposing Public Safety because it wanted the spectrum to be auctioned. Therefore, I partnered with the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC). This organization provides services to co-op power companies and some rural telecommunications companies. Since that time, obviously, even more potential partners have been added.

As an example, we did an analysis of the State of Kentucky. At the time of the report, Kentucky had about 4,315,000 residents (based on a 2009 estimate), which included 1,749,000 households that an NTIA report broke down as follows:

Total Households:                              1,749,000
Total with Internet access:                 960,000              54.86%
Total with dial-up access:                   253,000              14.44%
Total with broadband access:           700,000              40.02%
Total with anywhere access:           1,166,000            66.67% (meaning, home, work, or coffee shops)

Based on this information, we determined that 253,000 households only had slow-speed dial-up access to the Internet available while 1,049,000 homes had no access to broadband services. Next we contacted the NRTC and learned that the following rural power companies and telephone companies have facilities within the State of Kentucky:

Big Rivers Electric Corporation
Blue Grass Energy Cooperative Corporation
Clark Energy Cooperative, Inc.
Cumberland Valley Electric
East Kentucky Power Cooperative
Farmers Rural Electric Cooperative
Fleming Mason Energy
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative Corporation
Fox Creek R.E.C.C.
Gearheart Communications / dba Inter Mountain Cable, Inc.
Grayson Rural Electric Cooperative Corp
Green River Electric Corporation
Harrison County R.E.C.C.
Henderson Union RECC
Hickman-Fulton Counties Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
Inter-County Energy Cooperative
Jackson Energy Cooperative
Jackson Purchase Energy
Kenergy
Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives
Licking Valley Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
Logan Telephone Cooperative
Meade County Rural Electric Cooperative
Mountain Rural Telephone Cooperative Corporation
Nolin Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
Owen Electric Cooperative, Inc.
Pennyrile Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative
Salt River Electric Cooperative Corporation
Shelby Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
South Central Rural Telephone Co.
South Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
SouthEast Telephone, Inc.
Taylor County Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
Three Oaks Marketing and Development
Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation
West Kentucky RECC
West Kentucky and Tennessee Telecommunications Cooperative

Mapping the areas of Kentucky covered by these companies, we determined that carefully constructed public/private partnerships would provide LTE broadband services to more than 90% of the state’s population and would provide Public Safety with broadband coverage to 95% of the state. The business model we used for this exercise was as follows:

Contributions from the rural power companies and telcos:

1. Existing right-of-ways, high-tension towers for cell sites, backhaul where available
2. Cash

In exchange, each of these organizations would have secondary access to the Public Safety LTE spectrum and could:

1. Use it for their own smart grid requirements
2. Use it for meter reading and other command and control functions
3. Resell it to their rural customers

These types of public/private partnerships are viable, these organizations, for the most part, want and need access to broadband, and they have both in-kind and monetary assets to bring to the program. They will have broadband and their customers will have broadband. Further, since all of these companies have service vehicles, they could easily install inexpensive LTE modems in homes and offices throughout their territories as well as providing repair services.

Today, of course, there are many more partners that might be willing to assist with the build-out in rural America as well as the suburban areas of the United States. I have talked with several larger electric companies serving counties surrounding major cities and they are also interested in this type of public/private partnership, and I am sure that many of the commercial operators would be as well. One benefit for the commercial operators might be the additional clout they would have with planning commissions, city councils, and county boards of supervisors. It still takes a long time for network operators to navigate through the planning process for new sites, but if the new site was also to include the Public Safety broadband network, that fact alone might shave some time off of the usually long and tedious process of new cell site placement.

Urban Bandwidth Sharing

Sharing spectrum in dense urban areas will need to be done with care. As mentioned, over time the demand for Public Safety data and video usage will increase and the number of Public Safety devices will grow so shared usage in the major metro areas may, in fact, be possible when the network is first put into operation. However, it is also possible, especially if voice is added to the network, that the amount of excess capacity will shrink to the point where a public sector company finds that its investment in the network is no longer viable. If the public partners are commercial operators, FirstNet must be cognizant of the fact that the traffic usage on these networks spikes in the same area as the incident, and during the same period of time. If the utility companies become our public partners, their usage will also spike during these times. All we have to do is look back to Sandy and other major storms where there were power outages, gas line issues, water, and sewage issues to understand that we could end up with the Public Safety network being overloaded. If Public Safety has pre-emptive priority, then these other vital services might be interrupted as well. Further, as FEMA and other federal agencies arrive on the scene, they too will need access to the network.

Obviously, careful planning and extensive real-time capacity monitoring of the network will be required. If the incident in question is localized to a few cell sectors or a few cell sites, then sharing can continue in other portions of the city. However, if the incident is widespread as it was with Sandy and other types of storms, then the demands for service across a wide portion of the urban network may well exceed the capabilities of the network. FirstNet is well aware that there is a balancing act here. It needs the partners in order to establish the network, but it is risky to bring on partners in areas where the amount of capacity available to them might end up not being their best long-term solution. I believe that FirstNet is looking at other funding models as well, as it should be.

Conclusions

During the last FirstNet meeting, a comment was made by one of the members that this network must be mission-critical, and I fully agree. However, the last part of the statement was that if a first responder were in trouble, he/she would need to be able to rely on this network. I take issue with that today. Since there is no mission-critical voice on the LTE network, no responders in trouble or in need of emergency assistance would pick up a smartphone. They would reach for their push-to-talk microphone, push the button, and ask for help—a one-handed operation—and someone would hear them. Many of them also have a red button on top of their radio that they can push to summon assistance. Yes, the LTE network must be mission-critical in nature, but the reality is that voice over LMR systems will still be widely used. During a life-endangering emergency, LMR voice will be the critical point of contact. The LTE network for voice and data will augment first responders’ capabilities in the field, but not replace LMR any time soon.

We must build the most robust and secure LTE network ever built and we must build it by being smart, partnering where practical, finding new sources of funding, and being creative, BUT we MUST continue to invest in our the Land Mobile Radio Systems that serve Public Safety today and will be needed well into the future. Today and into the foreseeable future, FirstNet’s broadband network is about augmenting the resources of those in the field and in the operations and 9-1-1 centers, but not about replacing the existing voice systems.

Andrew M. Seybold

How will we build the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) and attract the Public Safety community to use it? This will be the most complex network ever attempted by and for the Public Safety community. The benefits are many: new capabilities, new services, better response times, better incident management, better tracking of personnel and assets, and more ways to ensure the safety of the first responder community. But it is still a huge undertaking. The commercial operators that have built nationwide networks have done so over the course of many years and, with one exception (Sprint), they have combined other networks with theirs in order to grow a nationwide footprint.

The starting point came when Congress and the President awarded Public Safety the spectrum—20 MHz of prime 700-MHz spectrum. They also allocated $2 billion to begin the process with an additional $5 billion to be available once the spectrum auctions have been successfully completed, and provided us with a governance organization in the form of FirstNet to oversee this network and make it a reality. The FCC made sure that Public Safety will be able to use the most modern broadband technology available, Long Term Evolution (LTE). But it took many years of hard work by a unified Public Safety community to obtain what we have so far. Now it is important that FirstNet and the Public Safety community work together to make this network happen.

In this, the first of a multi-part series, I will attempt to outline what I believe are the steps that need to be taken to move forward with this network—a network that will both serve the Public Safety community for many years, and that will live up to the Public Safety community’s expectations. There are many steps that need to be followed, some serially, meaning one after the other, and others in parallel if we are to make this network a true nationwide network in a timely and cost-effective fashion. As mentioned above, the first several steps have been completed, but many more are needed. Below are the beginnings of a list of these steps as I see them, and there will be more that we only discover during the process:

1)     Obtain the spectrum:   Done.

2)     Obtain the funding:    We have SOME of the funding needed to complete this network.

3)     Set up the organization to build and manage the network on a nationwide basis:  Partially done. FirstNet and its Board of Directors is in place and beginning to move forward with filling out other positions with those who will facilitate progress. Commercial network operators have hundreds and thousands of people assigned to building and maintaining their own networks. FirstNet will have to make a number of decisions during the upcoming months as to how many people will be needed, if it will employ a project management company, and other for-hire assets.

4)     Empower the BTOP grants recipients to return to building out their networks in order to gain real-world knowledge and feedback on the network. FirstNet should be open to use a hosted core or obtain its own core that can then be integrated into the nationwide core.

5)     Determine what LTE attributes should be included in the network on day one of its operation, NPTSC has provided FirstNet with the requirements.

1. Recommendation: Data and video services only, NO VOICE at this point

6)     The heart of the network is the core or Evolved Packet Core (EPC)

1. Determine where redundant cores will be located.
2. Determine whether major cities, regions, and states will be permitted to augment this nationwide core with their own core (purchased with local dollars) in order to increase reliability of the network. They should be required to meet the NPSBN mandate for systemwide updates and application updates as the nationwide system is upgraded.
3. Determine the cost of this nationwide core and how soon can it be put into place.

7)     Meet with the states, tribes, and territories to develop a plan to gather the information that will be required by FirstNet for each state

1. Each state will need to reach out to its local jurisdictions and determine what assets are already in the ground and available to FirstNet to assist in the construction of the network. FirstNet is required to work with the states on gathering this information, but the states do not have a good handle on what local assets are already in place. A lot of detailed information must be collected by the states for each jurisdiction. Currently, a sub-committee of the APCO Broadband Committee is working on a template for the information needed to complete this assessment. Some states are already collecting this information but there does not appear to be a standardized format. DHS/FEMA/FCC has appointed field teams to assess Statewide Communications and Interoperability Plans (SCIPs) and compliance with the National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP). FirstNet will need to do the same thing in order to confirm that they have received the requested information with minimal conflicts.

8)     Determine what type of LTE coverage will be provided to each area simply by using these existing Public Safety sites. This will require propagation studies as well as determining if there is space at the site, including room for the antennas on the towers.

9)     Determine which commercial networks are willing to partner with FirstNet

1. How will spectrum sharing work for these public/private partnerships?
2. Will this network have enough capacity to enable sharing even in the larger metro areas?

i.     My recommendation: No network sharing should be permitted in the top 50 markets until Public Safety has loaded the system with all of its own devices and real-time information regarding available capacity can be measured.

10)  Determine which commercial sites are available within each jurisdiction to fill in the required coverage

1. What is the cost for FirstNet to harden these sites, what are the monthly costs to occupy these sites, and more information must be gathered. Minimum standards will need to be used to determine this; perhaps something similar to the Motorola R56 baseline requirement could be used.

11)  Identify other public sector organizations that are willing to partner with FirstNet

1. Rural telcos and power companies
2. Utilities
3. Medical organizations
4. Railroads
5. Others

12)  Commence network design once this information is gathered and areas of network coverage can be obtained

13)  Assign and weigh costs against the available federal funds and funds states or local areas might be willing to contribute once the network has been designed. Funds through in-kind investments from the public partners must be calculated as well as ongoing operational costs.

14)  Decide how best to build out the network with the available funding at this point

1. FirstNet has stated publically that it wants to build out both metro and rural areas at the same time, but some priorities will need to be established for these build-outs.
2. Review funding options: Return to Congress for more money, ask states and local entities to contribute, gather more partners, use more spectrum sharing, and more.

15)  Meanwhile, BTOP networks should be up and operational

1. Learn from their deployments and any mistakes made along the way. This information will prove invaluable for constructing the full network. Each BTOP should be required to report to FirstNet the status of the network on a monthly basis using a standardized set of use and performance metrics.

16)  Deploy the network. While it seems as though this might take an enormous amount of time, I believe that many of these tasks can be performed in parallel with each other.

Of course, there are other views on how this network should be built. One I keep hearing is that the top four commercial operators will be hired to deploy the network using their existing LTE vendors and their existing sites and that few, if any, Public Safety sites will be required. This way the cost of the network can be kept lower. Each network operator would be incented because the Public Safety devices, as envisioned by FirstNet, will include not only the Public Safety LTE network but all four of the commercial networks as well, both 3G and LTE technologies, and satellite capability for areas that will never be covered by the network. These devices will also need Bluetooth, GPS, and perhaps both public Wi-Fi and the Public Safety 4.9-GHZ band built into them.

When I consider the resources available, I believe there are better ways to accomplish what the acting General Manager of FirstNet envisions. For example, instead of including satellite service in every device, what if we made better use of the Public Safety 4.9-GHZ Wi-Fi-type spectrum? It is true that this spectrum is currently used for many fixed, point-to-point systems for camera backhaul and voice communications links, but we have 50 MHz of spectrum at 4.9 GHz and we could allocate a portion of that spectrum for mobile devices. Public Safety is very familiar with making use of vehicular repeaters or PAC-RTs as they are sometimes called, and 4.9 GHz would make an ideal relay system for the LTE network. One example of how it might work goes like this:

Police, fire, and EMS in rural areas would have LTE modems in their vehicles as well satellite terminals. There are ways the satellite terminal can be used to take over existing LMR PTT services as well as LTE broadband services when out of coverage. The device carried by first responders could still have Public Safety LTE and the four network operators’ networks built in or not, but when they left their vehicle they would use the 4.9-GHz link to talk back to the vehicle and the vehicle would then repeat the traffic over the LTE network or over the satellite network. It would be possible to use this link to extend the range of LMR radio systems as well.

We need to think not only about the network costs, the capital expense to install it and the monthly operational costs to run and maintain it, we also need to keep in mind the cost and complexity of the devices for field use. One of the main goals for using LTE in the first place was that it is a worldwide standard for wide-area broadband, therefore the device costs will be less than if Public Safety were to use some other technology. However, if we design devices that require device vendors to build special models only for Public Safety, we are liable to end up paying a premium for them. The expectation among many within the Public Safety community is that these devices should be in the sub-$500 range but the reality is that what we pay, today, for an LTE device on a commercial network does not reflect the true cost of the device. If you buy an iPhone on AT&T or Verizon with a two-year contract, AT&T and Verizon subsidize the cost of that device. If you were to walk into an Apple store and purchase an iPhone 5 with no contract, the phone would cost you more than $800—for a phone built by the millions.

Another example would be the Samsung Rugby Pro. It is a ruggedized (not Mil-Spec like most LMR radios, but pretty solid), Android-based, LTE smartphone. The two-year contract price is about $99, but here again, without the network operator subsidy, your real replacement cost is about $450. Keep in mind, this price does not include Public Safety Band 14, all of the other networks’ spectrum, or satellite service.

The cost of the devices will be borne by the local entities thus we must secure the best pricing possible for these devices. FirstNet is confident that there is enough interest in building devices for Public Safety, and that other network operators will want to share the spectrum, that the number of devices will be in the millions to keep the pricing low, but I believe we need to look at alternatives such as those mentioned above and others to ensure that we secure these devices at the best possible pricing. I don’t believe that commercial users of the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network, that will have secondary access to the network, will want to pay for a device that includes satellite capabilities when they will be precluded from using the satellite or will never travel to areas where the satellite is the only form of communications available.

FirstNet has its work cut out for it. The challenges are many, the money not enough. FirstNet is being creative, exploring many options and alternatives, but at the end of the day this network must be for Public Safety and provide the services Public Safety wants and needs. Public Safety users must have absolute priority and it must be a managed network. It needs to be built from a technical perspective as a nationwide network but it must be operated on a local-control basis, and it must be as robust. We also need to keep our LMR radio systems up and operational. Voice will remain the backbone of all Public Safety communications systems. When a first responder is in trouble or needs assistance quickly, he/she won’t ask for help over the LTE network, the call for help will go out over a voice device.

In the next installment of this series I will dive deeper into these and other issues facing FirstNet and the Public Safety community. As the FirstNet Acting General Manager stated at the recent APCO Emerging Technology Forum, FirstNet’s next mission is to meet with the states, tribes, and territories and begin gathering the information it will need in order to continue to lay out the network criteria. This will be a long and involved process, as many of the states are not prepared to provide what FirstNet will require—but it can and will be done. The results will hopefully assist FirstNet in moving down the list of items that need to be completed as we head toward the ultimate goal of establishing this much-needed network.

Andrew Seybold

We really need to look at these numbers first because the FCC has very strict requirements for commercial wireless network operators for reporting outages so the 25% failure rate is considered fairly accurate. On the other hand, there are no such requirements for Public Safety or even utility companies’ networks so all we really have there is anecdotal information. So NYC says no outages but in Northern New Jersey and elsewhere, I have heard reports of Public Safety outages. However, as you will see below, there is a big difference between a commercial cell site and a Public Safety site being out of service.

In the wake of this super storm, the FCC is “looking into” what can be done to beef up the wireless systems during this type of disaster, and there are a lot of after-action reports floating around as well as Monday morning quarterbacks who seem to think that the fixes are easy to identify and to prevent from happening in the future. I disagree with such comments. No matter how well prepared we are or how many contingencies we plan for, we will face either a natural or man-made disaster for which there is no preparation. In the case of Sandy, both the commercial and Public Safety network operators had learned lessons from Katrina, Isaac, and other storms. But if you remember, last November, the East Coast was hit with an earthquake. Who was prepared for an earthquake on the East Coast?

Sorry FCC, but failures of all types of communications systems will continue to occur. We can only plan and prepare for what we know and believe can happen. Public Safety agencies such as NYPD can and do plan for what I call graceful degradation. Its command center, which was fully staffed during Sandy, has full generator back-up separate and apart from the rest of Police headquarters, it has fully redundant telephone lines coming into the building from two different central offices, fiber that is also fully redundant and includes commercial fiber as well as the City’s fiber assets, and there are satellite feeds into the building. The systems held up during Sandy and worked as they were supposed to, providing command and control for many city departments, FEMA, and others. The cost to make this center this redundant is doable for this type of emergency operations center, but almost nowhere else.

Multiple Points of Failure (Weak Links)

Let’s look at the points of failure within a wireless network system and what can be done to improve them. First, it is important to understand that unlike today’s Public Safety radio sites, a cell site that is not connected to the network via some type of connection—wire, fiber, or microwave—is simply a dumb site. The back-end of the network is the brains of the cellular architecture and cell sites do not function at all if they lose their connectivity. During Sandy, trees and debris knocked down hundreds if not thousands of telephone poles. On these poles are generally three or four different services. First of course are the power lines, next are the telephone companies’ wired and perhaps fiber connections, and then the cable operators’ wires are on the lowest part of the pole, so a pole that is down takes down all three communication services along with electricity. If the connectivity to a cell site is being carried on these poles and they are knocked out, the cell site is out of service regardless of whether it has back-up batteries and a generator and the site is still technically in operation. Without connectivity to and from the cell site, it is just plain down.

Let’s compare this to Public Safety sites, many of which are also connected to their network by wires, fiber, or microwave. Since these are, for the most part, voice systems that operate in relay mode (when they hear a signal on a channel they rebroadcast it on another channel), even if all of the connectivity is lost, the site will continue to be functional. The operations center may have to resort to radio control instead of wired or microwave, but it still works. Further, if the site is part of one of the more advanced Public Safety networks and it becomes disconnected from the network, there is a built-in fallback mode that will turn it into a standalone but functioning site. If the site fails for other reasons, e.g., a power outage, generator failure, or damage to the antennas, and is knocked out of service, Public Safety still has one level of fallback that is not available today over commercial wireless systems. Public Safety voice devices are designed to operate in what is called talk-around, simplex, or tactical mode. This means that units can talk to each other even where no radio site is up and operating. Simplex is the final fallback for Public Safety and it works. It worked during Sandy while cell phones people carried in areas where there were no operational cell sites were completely useless. Without a cell site, cell phones are reduced to small packages of electronic components and batteries that cannot talk to anything.

If the connectivity to the cell site is underground, perhaps it survived, although in New York and New Jersey many underground utilities failed. Vaults can become flooded, and while the cables might be waterproof, there are splices and junction boxes along the route. In many cases, having utilities underground does not make them immune from damage. Sandy was a perfect example of this.

If connectivity to the site remained in place, other points of failure might include the power lines to the site. Many sites have back-up batteries and generators, some only have batteries, and some don’t have any back-up power at all. A few years ago, the FCC tried to mandate back-up power and the cell industry said it could do its own planning—and it has. Some cell sites are more important than others, some can have generators easily installed, some cannot. Cell sites can be on buildings but it is not practical to put a generator and fuel on a rooftop. Batteries yes, but generators and fuel, generally no. So the site may only have battery backup. If there is a generator, it might be located on the ground next to the building, in the basement, or even on the first floor. If there is flooding, well, we all know, or should know that generators don’t run underwater.

But if the generator does run, the site’s connectivity is not impacted, the building or shelter that houses the cell site equipment is not damaged, and the tower or structure and antennas are not damaged, the site will remain in operation until the power is restored or the generator runs out of fuel. If the generator has fuel for five days of operation but no one can reach the site for a week or more, the generator will cease to run and the site will go down.

So the points of failure for a single cell site, excluding the network back-end systems, include connectivity failures, power failures, batteries running out of power, generators running out of fuel, tower or structure damage, damage to antennas, and damage to equipment in the shelter. That is seven possible points of failure per cell site. While the same number of failure points are also applicable to Public Safety systems, as mentioned, there are also at least three levels of communications fallback for the Public Safety voice systems as opposed to zero for commercial cell sites.

Now in the case of Sandy, both the commercial network operators and the Public Safety agencies had time to prepare for the storm. They had warning unlike for an earthquake or a wild land fire, or a major train wreck, airplane crash, or manmade disaster. Since they did have warning, network operators sent in technicians, engineers, parts, antennas, and cellular sites on wheels. They staged additional generators, fuel for generators, and all sorts of pieces and parts for them. They were ready and prepared as much as could be expected. Why then did it take so long to return the sites to normal operation? This brings us to the next part of the equation. If there is no connectivity to the cell site, the network operator has to wait for the phone or fiber company to bring the circuits back up. If there is microwave connectivity and the microwave antenna has been moved out of alignment by high winds or shaking, someone has to go to the site, climb the tower, and re-aim the antenna. If power is out, network operators have to try to keep their cell sites working on batteries and generators until power is restored. But if they cannot even access the site because local officials won’t permit entry because the area is still too dangerous, it does not matter how many people, how much equipment, how many generators, or how much fuel is staged and ready.

If, unlike a hurricane, there is a disaster with no warning, not only do network operators have to move people and equipment into the affected areas, they still must wait until they are granted access to the area. During the aftermath of Sandy, personnel on the ground included power company, telephone company, and wireless network employees, and all of them had to wait until the local officials deemed an area safe before they were permitted entry. The bottom line here is that cell sites that are down cannot be magically turned on again. People must gain access to them, determine the source of the problem, and then work with others in order to fix them. Meanwhile, Public Safety and amateur radio systems stay up and running, at least in the unit-to-unit mode so there is some communications available for first responders.

Now comes another wrinkle to all of this. If you drive around the Mid-West and the East Coast you will see many cell towers (but few on the West Coast where they prefer “towers” to be pine or palm trees). If you look at these towers you will usually see more than one set of antennas. In most cases there are four or five sets starting at the top of the tower and working their way down. These are shared sites. Many shared sites have all four or five of the commercial networks on them. In Delaware County, PA, for example, just west of Philadelphia, almost every tower supports all five network operators. Losing a single tower or a group of towers takes out all of the networks.

Now suppose that FirstNet decides to have its network added to each of these cell sites. It makes perfect sense. It will be less expensive, therefore the funding will go further, the sites are already in place, and they already have 2G, 3G, and in most cases, commercial 4G networks running on them. The equipment is housed in shelters at the base of the tower and there are usually generators at each site. If the Public Safety network is added to these sites, and if they fail during the next Sandy, not only would Public Safety lose its broadband network capabilities in that area, it would lose ALL of the potential back-up networks as well.

Being Realistic

I think that the FCC, Congress, FirstNet, and Public Safety need to be realistic about several things when it comes to cellular networks. (Yes, the FirstNet Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network will be a cellular network.)

First the FCC. Regardless of what the FCC mandates, there will continue to be network failures during natural and manmade disasters. It is not possible to prevent all of the failures; there are simply too many points of failure for wireless networks that are dependent on connectivity along with power from third parties. There are too many issues when it comes to back-up power, antennas and antenna structures, buildings, and equipment. There will always be some failures. We can stage people, equipment, and spares, but if people cannot safely access the sites, determine the problem, and then fix it, the site will stay offline until it is safe, until power has been restored or a fuel truck can reach the site, or until the connectivity is back in place.

Next to FirstNet and Public Safety. No matter what we do, the FirstNet network will resemble a commercial cellular-type network because it IS a cellular-type network. There will be too many sites, each with multiple points of failure. Perhaps in major cities, city personnel who are paid to take more risks than private contractors can gain access to sites, but if they cannot restore the connectivity and/or power, if they cannot take the fuel truck to the site, the site will stay down until they can.

The bottom line is that no cellular-type network that requires connectivity in order to function will be immune from failures when it is needed most. If you consider that Pubic Safety has $7 billion to build out this network, whereas AT&T is spending $14 billion on only its phase II build-out, there is no way the network will be as robust as our existing LMR networks. Maybe in the future we will have LTE devices that will work off-network, but today we do not have them nor do we have a standard for them.

Perhaps there is a better way to build out the first generation of the Public Safety Broadband Network. Maybe the already-hardened Public Safety sites should be used first and then augmented with sites used by commercial network operators. Even then this network will be prone to more failures than today’s Public Safety voice networks, but I do believe that there is a way to build the Public Safety network so that it is less prone to the seven points of failure than commercial networks are today.

But think about this, Public Safety, what if you put your voice, data, and video services on this one network. What if the FCC takes back the existing Public Safety LMR voice channels and ALL you have is the LTE nationwide network. When the next Sandy or earthquake hits, and 25% or more of the sites go down, how will you be able to continue to protect and serve? The Public Safety Broadband Network will change the way Public Safety operates. It will enable data and video services giving eyes to those in the field that today have only voice. Can we make it as robust? Can we add enough graceful degradation to make it stand up during the next Sandy, as the Public Safety voice networks did? I, for one, am skeptical, especially given the funding we have available.

Andrew M. Seybold

As the FirstNet board addresses the architecture for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network using LTE (Long Term Evolution), one of the issues concerns voice: what to include when. The different types of voice include dial-up for making phone calls, non-mission-critical push-to-talk, and mission-critical push-to-talk (PTT). Then there is off-network, or as the first responder community is accustomed to saying, simplex or talk-around, which is the ability to talk to multiple units without having to be connected to a network. Each of these is important for the Public Safety community, some more than others, and each presents its own technological challenges that will be discussed in more detail later. First, I want to concentrate on the politics of voice on this network.

If the various levels of government believe that the new Public Safety broadband network will be able to satisfy Public Safety’s requirements for voice as well as data services, local and state jurisdictions will stop spending money on their existing Public Safety voice networks that are and will continue to be critical to Public Safety. On a federal level, if Congressional leaders believe that the new network will be able to replace Public Safety voice networks they could convince Congress to require the Public Safety community to return their existing voice spectrum to the FCC so it can be used for other broadband networks. In point of fact, the law that provided Public Safety with the spectrum and the funding for the nationwide broadband network already takes the first step in spectrum give-back requiring agencies in the top eleven municipalities to vacate the T-Band spectrum they have been sharing with TV stations for many years—spectrum that is vital to their ability to serve the public in those areas.

With each level of government, the reasons for wanting to believe that this new network will replace today’s Public Safety voice networks are different but the results would be the same: Public Safety would lose vital spectrum, which would seriously harm their effectiveness and endanger them and the citizens they are sworn to protect.

The Local Level

Currently, the municipalities and counties of America are strapped for funding. Many Public Safety agencies have already seen their budgets cut. Some police and fire departments have lost personnel to these cuts, others have lost new and much needed equipment, and some both. Many municipalities and counties are funding the FCC’s unfunded mandate requiring some land mobile radio users, including the Public Safety community, to narrowband their radios. That is, they have to use less spectrum for voice—half as much per channel—than they had been using. While this mandate has been on the books for more than ten years, many departments have not yet upgraded or replaced their existing Public Safety radio equipment. Some of these upgrades require only software changes to each and every radio in a given system, but departments with older radios are facing the expense of having to replace these radios at an average per-unit cost of about $2,000.

Next the municipalities and counties are faced with having to continue to spend funds on their existing land mobile radio systems because their equipment is outdated, and in some cases update them for better coverage or join a regional system. Yearly costs include radio site rental, electrical power, and microwave, and other items need to be covered each month in municipal and county budgets, as well as communications personnel or two-way radio service shops needed to keep this equipment operational 24/7 no matter what. All of these items are a drain on dwindling budgets and we are already seeing that some elected officials who are finding out about this new nationwide broadband system are jumping to the conclusion that this new network will enable them to do away with their own voice networks, eliminate personnel needed to operate and maintain them, and save the municipality or county a significant amount of money. Therefore if voice, even if it were available on the LTE network from day one, is part of the initial roll-out requirements put forth by FirstNet, the result will be the deterioration of the existing mission-critical Public Safety voice networks, something first responders cannot afford to have happen.

The States

Many states are also faced with having to spend money to narrowband and many of them are in a position where they will have to upgrade or replace their existing statewide Public Safety radio systems within the next five years. In California, for example, the Highway Patrol is still operating in the 42 MHz portion of the spectrum. The good news is that radio waves carry further at this frequency, so the nationwide system will use a lot fewer radio sites than would be required to replace the system, which it is currently planning to do. The object is to combine the Highway Patrol and other Public Safety and state agencies on a single statewide voice system so that a single statewide radio system will replace the multiple systems in operation today, effectively saving the state considerable money. But first it will have to spend a lot of money it doesn’t have today. To replace the existing Highway Patrol radio system will require more than three times the number of radio sites and a smarter radio system, which will cost millions of dollars. At the moment, this project is moving ahead slowly. California is not the only state in this position.

Once again, if voice is named as a component for the first deployment of the Public Safety broadband system, I am sure that those who run the state governments will cancel any plans for radio system upgrades believing that this one new broadband system, partially funded by federal dollars, will solve their problem for them and significantly reduce their own need to spend money. This is a mistake that would also jeopardize the lives of our first responders, the citizens and, by the way, those within the state government who also rely on Public Safety protection on both a local and state level.

On the Federal Level

When we were working with the FCC, Congress, and the Executive Branch to obtain the spectrum, funding, and governance needed to build this nationwide, fully interoperable network, some of the obstacles we ran up against were:

1)     False claims that Public Safety already has a lot of unneeded, valuable spectrum that could be auctioned to help reduce the national debt.

2)     A claim that the spectrum Public Safety was asking for (worth about $3 billion) and the funding Public Safety was asking for ($12 billion) should both be used to help reduce the national debt.

Public Safety had to overcome other objections but these are two of the primary ones that required responses. Even so, during the process, various bills either being floated or introduced in Congress required Public Safety to give back some of its voice spectrum. Public Safety and its supporters fought this give-back successfully until the last few days when the compromise bill included the spectrum Public Safety wanted, $7 billion in funding, and a governance organization but also included the provision that within nine years the top eleven municipalities and surrounding areas would have to vacate the spectrum they have been sharing for years with the TV industry. This spectrum is vital to municipalities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, and LA, but the give-back is part of the law and the rationale for this was that the new network would be able to replace the spectrum Public Safety has to give back. At the time the law was passed, not even the experts in the LTE technology knew whether mission-critical voice could or would be supported on the new network. However, some of those in power within the federal government had been told that the network would support voice so Public Safety has effectively already lost valuable voice spectrum.

If those in power next term see that the Public Safety broadband network will support voice, or that voice is included in the specification for the first generation of the network, they could easily put more pressure on the Public Safety community to give back even more of its current voice spectrum allocations—allocations Public Safety cannot afford to lose for many years to come. The other issue that is not well understood in Washington is that most of the spectrum now occupied by Public Safety for voice is intermingled with other users including businesses, industry, taxi cabs, and alarm companies, and the spectrum in question is not well suited for conversion to broadband use. Yet because the laws and rules are made by those with little or no understanding of the technical reasons that converting the spectrum to broadband use is neither feasible nor cost effective, that won’t stop them from trying to take it back from the Public Safety community.

So to me the political dangers of declaring the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) capable of voice services for Public Safety are many as are the risks. Public Safety cannot afford to lose any more of its voice spectrum. There are those within the technology community who believe that voice over LTE is possible very soon, while others, including me, are a lot more cautious. I would never say “never” in a debate about voice over LTE and its capabilities, but I am saying that until we have it, it works, and it is proven to provide 100% of the requirements of the Public Safety community, to include it as though it were real today would be a costly mistake for the Public Safety community at all three levels of government: municipalities/counties, states, and federal.

The Technology Reasons

In order to fully understand the issue of voice over LTE it is important to break voice down into three different components or types, and then add the term “mission-critical” to at least two of these. Mission-critical voice is what Public Safety uses today. It is vital to its operations, it is vital to its safety, and it is vital to the safety of those they protect. Mission-critical means everywhere, all of the time. It does not mean best effort, which is how commercial networks’ services are described. A commercial network’s best effort is NOT good enough.

Dial-Up Voice

Commercial operators provide wireless telephone service. That is, with your device you can receive a call or call a phone number anywhere in the world. You dial a number and if you are in range of the commercial network, you hear it ring and are connected to the number or to voice mail. Dial-up voice is the main function of voice over commercial networks but it is NOT the mainstay of voice over Public Safety networks. Today, Public Safety uses dial-up voice for non-essential communications between two people. Normal, essential voice communications is handled by Push-To-Talk or PTT services (see below). Today the only voice over LTE network provider in the world is Metro PCS, the rest of the networks are still relying on their 2G and 3G networks for voice services. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is Voice over IP (VoIP). It is coming to LTE for certain, but even Verizon recently decided to delay its own voice over LTE service until 2014. To me this means that VoLTE is not yet ready for prime time or Verizon, the world leader when it comes to LTE deployment, would not have delayed its launch of VoLTE by eighteen months.

Public Safety networks do not include dial-up voice services. The Public Safety voice networks make use of push-to-talk voice and when they need dial-up voice they reach for a commercial cell phone. Unless they are involved in a major incident when commercial networks are overloaded, they make their voice call the same way you and I do every day. So while dial-up for Public Safety is an important form of voice communications, it is my belief that it should continue to be left to the commercial network operators that have been doing it for years and who have all of the roaming and billing platforms in place to make it seamless no matter where in the world we are.

Push-To-Talk

The first type of push-to-talk is on-network, which means that the radios all talk through the network just as our cellular phones do. The network relays the voice to the dispatch center as well as other units on the same radio channel. Push-to-talk is the workhorse of voice for Public Safety and will continue to be of key importance in the future. PTT is faster than dial-up—push a button and talk. PTT is one-to-many, vital for Public Safety. Voice traffic on a Public Safety network is managed by real people in a dispatch center. Their job is to dispatch a call, again one-to-many so even if a single patrol car is to respond, nearby cars hear the call and the response. If additional assistance is required cars might start making their way closer to the incident location so they will be available to respond more quickly. Dispatchers mange the traffic on the network and assure that responding and other units are heard and information is passed. During times of heavy network usage, they are called upon to manage multiple incidents including routine patrols and other voice information by taking control of the radio channel and maintaining a military-type discipline when running the radio channels.

Off-Network Push-To-Talk (Simplex, Direct Mode, or Talk-Around)

One of the most important forms of voice communications for Public Safety is off-network or simplex push-to-talk. Today this usually occurs on separate channels that are not part of the network. This type of communications is used in the following scenarios:

1)     When units are together at an incident, they switch to off-network and are able to talk directly to others at the incident. This accomplishes two things. First, it moves this traffic off the network so the dispatch channel is available for other dispatches and radio traffic.

2)     Next, it enables the units on the scene to talk directly to each other, even when they are deep inside buildings or sub-basements where they might not be able to contact the network.

3)     If the incident involves multiple groups (e.g., police, swat, detectives, fire, and EMS personnel), each group usually has its own channel to coordinate its own activities without causing interference with the other groups.

4)     If the units are out of range of the network, they can still communicate with each other—perhaps not with the dispatcher, but with each other. This serves them well because they are still in communications and if a first responder needs help, he/she can communicate with others in the area. This is a mission-critical Public Safety requirement because if the Public Safety radio cannot reach the network it is a worthless tool. A fire fighter trapped deep inside a building who needs help and cannot reach a network must have off network/direct mode capability to call for help or could be doomed to death or serious injury.

Today Public Safety voice communications is channelized. That is, each department has certain channels for their use. Some are assigned for on-network dispatch, some for municipality-wide on-network communications, and some for off-network, incident-type communications, but all are vital to the Public Safety community and each of these serves a distinct and specific purpose. If a network fails, and even Public Safety networks fail, the Public Safety community can still communicate unit to unit. Usually the dispatch center can transmit both on and off-network and while off-network communications is not usually designed for wide areas, it does provide a back-up in case of network failure. In a commercial network or using the Public Safety broadband network today, if you are out of range or if the network fails or is congested, your wireless device is basically useless. This is not acceptable in the world of Public Safety.

One final point about Public Safety push-to-talk systems. Larger municipalities are usually divided into multiple dispatch zones and each has its own dispatcher or two assigned to it. In addition, there are usually several municipality-wide channels used for municipality-wide incidents (storms, snow, etc.), and for the Public Safety Brass to be able to travel municipality wide and still be in touch. As for off-network channels, it depends on what is available in the area. On the various radio bands (there are six different bands today), there are interoperability channels. These are different for fire, EMS, and law enforcement, but there are statewide and nationwide interoperability channels. They are not designed to handle the volume of communications needed in a major disaster such as 9/11 or Katrina, but they are designed so that units traveling to another jurisdiction can always have a radio channel available for emergency traffic or to be contacted while in route.

How many discreet radio channels are needed in any given area? That will depend on each area and how many channels are available for use. For example, in Santa Barbara County, the county fire department has six countywide dispatch channels and six additional off-network channels and the city fire department has three municipality-wide channels and two off-network channels. However, during our recent wildfires we ended up using eighteen on-network channels (county, city, forestry, and state), and 78 off-network channels—virtually every off-network channel available in the Southern California region. It is unknown at this point whether PTT over LTE can begin to support this number of discreet voice channels.

Voice Over LTE

Let’s start this section with the commercial operators. First, as mentioned previously, Metro PCS is the only U.S. network operator offering voice over LTE today and Verizon has delayed its launch by eighteen months to a projected date of 2014. Today your LTE phone, unless you are on Metro PCS, uses the network operator’s 2G or 3G networks for voice services and this will continue for some time. There are several reasons I do not believe the Public Safety network should include dial-up voice. The first is that it is in its infancy at the moment. Next, the commercial operators provide excellent dial-up voice services at very good prices. Since the FirstNet architecture includes multiple commercial networks in each device, the dial-up voice functions of the network, which are non-mission-critical in nature, would best be left to the commercial operators. Lastly, I am told by some very smart LTE engineers that adding dial-up voice to the Public Safety network will increase the cost of the network by up to 30% and the number of sites required by as much as 10%. Public Safety doesn’t have enough money to build the network it really needs so it does not make sense to me to use the extra money to add dial-up voice when it is available on at least four other networks.

Push-To-Talk over Commercial Networks

AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon all offer push-to-talk over their networks. Moreover, their PTT mimics a lot of the same functionality required by Public Safety. However, theirs are best-effort networks and not mission-critical networks, so during times of heavy congestion due to incidents there is no guarantee that Public Safety could even access a commercial network let alone its PTT capabilities. Now add to that the fact that each network is using a different PTT technology, which is NOT cross network compatible, and you can easily see that PTT over commercial networks is neither mission-critical nor interoperable across the networks. Sometime in the future I believe that this will change just as it did for voice, text messaging, and MMS, but for now this remains a problem for the Public Safety community. The off-network capabilities of the commercial networks today can be answered with two words: NOT AVAILABLE. When you are out of range, your wireless device is merely a paperweight!

Voice on the Public Safety LTE Broadband Network

As you can see, even dial-up voice is in its infancy on commercial LTE networks and it will be many more years before it is available on top tier networks. PTT is in disarray since each network has its own version of PTT and these systems are not compatible. While there is work being conducted by the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) organization in Boulder, Colorado, part of the National Institute of Science and Technology, and the NTIA within the Commerce Department, so far, we do not have any definitive solutions for Public Safety-grade PTT over LTE.

Many vendors in the Public Safety community have already been touting PTT over the Public Safety network and PTT bridges between the LTE network and the voice networks (usually the P25 digital technology for voice used by Public Safety). Harris, Alcatel Lucent, Motorola, Cassidian, and others have been demonstrating PTT over LTE and cross network LTE for the past year. However, once again, each vendor is using a different technology for its PTT solution. These solutions are not compatible with each other and it does not appear that there is any effort underway to come up with a common air-interface for PTT over the Public Safety LTE broadband network. Until that work is completed, if it is ever started, and a common interface is decided upon, the use of PTT over LTE will remain proprietary to each vendor.

At least in the world of Public Safety narrowband voice, there are only two standards: FM analog (the older technology) and P25, the new digital technology. Most land mobile radios on the market are capable of running both technologies. This is not an ideal world for sure, but it is better than four or five vendors offering PTT over LTE, none of which are compatible with the other. So if you look at the timeline I have developed below, you will see that I am convinced that a common PTT air interface for Public Safety LTE will not be available until at least mid-2015, and it will be 2018 before we see on-network mission-critical PTT voice services. Therefore, to include voice over LTE for Public Safety as a requirement for the initial nationwide Public Safety broadband network at this juncture is premature. I will admit that a few within the Public Safety community do not share my pessimistic view of this, but until voice over LTE is demonstrated, and until it has been tested and accepted by the Public Safety community, it is not real as far as I am concerned. I learned a very long time ago that engineers always believe they can bring technology to market faster than they really can and that the marketers of the world are prone to reducing the time to market even further.

The last and most important form of PTT voice over LTE is the off-network component. Here the PSCR is working diligently with the 3GPP to have a standard introduced and approved, but since the 3GPP is made up of thousands of members, some of which just plain don’t support off-network communications where the network cannot see what the device is doing, I am not all that optimistic. In this case, I am hoping that I am the one who is wrong but I have learned over time to err on the side of caution. If Public Safety loses its voice spectrum because of the expectations that LTE voice will be able to provide all of the benefits Public Safety needs today, then the Public Safety community will be in danger of not being able to protect each other or perform its duties properly. I would rather see it, kick the tires, and make sure it meets all of the requirements than to be optimistic that the engineers will be able to make it happen in a short timeframe.

These are my issues with off-network PTT over LTE:

1)     Today’s Public Safety voice radios use a transmit power of 5 watts for handhelds and 30-100 watts in the mobile. LTE devices have a transmit power of ½ watt.

1. There will be a big coverage difference when communicating device to device.

2)     LTE devices are designed so that part of the “smarts” is in the network and part is in the devices. Using these devices off-network will mean moving more of the “smarts” to the device.

3)     Can a device that is controlled by a network be used off-network when within network coverage?

4)     How many off-network voice channels or groups will be supported by off-network voice? What is the correct number? One is not enough, we used 78 during our Tea Fire but spread out over ten miles. Could we manage with less if the coverage is not as good?

5)     What will off-network voice communications cost? Will it be comparable to a device that includes both land mobile radio off-network channels and LTE on-network PTT?

6)     Will commercial operators really support off-network voice and data services within the 3GPP?

7)     Is voice over IP on the 4.9 GHz licensed Public Safety band an option?

I am sure there are other issues as well but I believe we need answers to at least those posed above to determine whether off-network PTT voice will be viable over the LTE broadband network. As I have said, I don’t believe that based on all of the above political and technological questions that remain unanswered that we should consider including voice communications in the first iteration of the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network. There are too many unknowns and too many differences in opinions about when the technology will be available to support the requirements of Public Safety voice in a mission-critical situation to trust those who are, I believe, overly optimistic about when these capabilities are coming to LTE.

I may be too conservative in my timeline, as others are quick to point out, but I believe that in this case we need to err on the side of caution rather than the side of optimism. Too many times in this world of technology we have been promised the commercialization of technology that has taken years longer to become a reality than we were originally told. I do not believe that Public Safety can take chances with a new technology that is unproven and broadcast to the politicians that we are willing to do so before we even have a technology that is proven and available.

Let’s launch the new and important Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network and make sure it does what we expect of it for data and video, get it up and running and learn how to take full advantage of it first, and THEN let’s work on the voice component. To do otherwise will put Public Safety voice communications at risk. At the end of the day, voice will still be the most important component of the communications tools we make available for Public Safety and we cannot afford to take any chances.

Andrew M. Seybold

The caveat is that your agency can start using LTE today, with good results, but during an emergency you may or may not be able to access the commercial network you have chosen because of network congestion and the lack of network priority for first responders. These are two of many reasons Congress was finally convinced that Public Safety needed its own broadband network, but you can still learn a lot about what LTE can do for your department and those around you, and you can find out what types of applications you will be able to run and gain some firsthand experience with the benefits of LTE broadband.

It is not necessary to equip your entire fleet with broadband services, perhaps you can start with the Lieutenants or Sergeants in a police department, Battalion Chiefs of your fire departments, or perhaps your busiest EMS units. You can begin by outfitting the notebook computers in these vehicles with a commercial wireless broadband modem, either a USB dongle (not the best choice) or vehicular-mounted LTE modem with an external antenna. You can continue to use your existing data system if you have one and use the commercial LTE network for comparison, or you can switch over to the commercial LTE network completely. Either way, you will be able to gain firsthand experience with wireless broadband and the types of things it will enable your agency to accomplish in the field.

If you purchase or lease vehicular modems that will handle multiple devices (there are some on the market already), you will be able to use them for access to a commercial network today and be fairly confident that if they have support for band 14 (the Public Safety band on 700 MHz) you will be able to simply plug in a new radio and be up and running on the Public Safety network once it is built in your area. At the APCO show in Minneapolis in August, a number of vendors were demonstrating these dual modems. One caveat here, I believe that the Public Safety Communications Research program in Boulder will end up with the task of certifying these devices for use on the Public Safety system, but I also believe that you can probably make a deal with a vendor to provide you with upgraded modems at no additional charge once the final approvals are available.

What should you expect to pay per modem, per month? That will depend on a few things. First is the number of modems you purchase. Usually, the more modems you buy, the less expensive each modem is. Second will be the deal you make with the commercial network operator. I have seen pricing as low as $38 per month for unlimited LTE for Public Safety and I have seen slightly higher prices. The network operators want your business and want to capture it now so in the future they can work with you for roaming on their network as well as non-mission-critical voice over their network. You should obtain prices from more than one network and see which will offer you the best deal with the most flexibility.

Next up is choosing the content you want to run over the wireless broadband network. For example, you could choose to broadcast the video from a dashboard camera back to the dispatch center but you don’t want to do that for every car all of the time, there is no point and not enough bandwidth. However, when a car stops a motorist for something other than a minor issue, it could send a streaming video of the incident back to the dispatch center and, if other units were responding to offer assistance, the video could be sent to the responding vehicles. You can experiment with your existing data applications, easily use some off-the-shelf applications, or contact your CAD software supplier to see if its mobile version of the application is ready for testing. If you have some talented in-house IT types, you could write your own applications and/or interfaces to your existing applications. You could also enable Internet access for your fleet, experiment with GPS location, try out on-scene report packages, try transmitting still, digital pictures of an accident, and provide update traffic routing for units on the way to an incident.

If you have fixed cameras in your city, you could choose the one nearest an incident and have that video sent, via the dispatch center, to the responding units. The first service you could try could be receiving building plans as you head for an incident, or hazardous location information. At a scene, you could place cameras to provide multiple views of the fire that could be watched by the Incident Commander and/or at the dispatch center. For EMS units, there are already a number of applications available for the transmission of medical information using smartphones and some attachments, and live video of a patient might also be helpful to the emergency room or trauma center.

While I am suggesting vehicle-mounted modems, it might also be practical to outfit some of your field resources with standard smartphones that could be tied into your system. Of course, most smartphones are not designed for the rigors of the Public Safety world, but in normal circumstances they can be very valuable for those in the field. We are already seeing a number of dispatch, parking ticket, license plate look-up, and other applications that have been built, mostly on the Android platform but some for the iPhone and even BlackBerrys. One advantage of smartphones, of course, is the fact that they are on a person not tied to a vehicle, and since they can take still pictures and videos, both of these can easily be sent to other first responders, the Incident Commander, and back to the dispatch center.

Again, commercial networks should not be relied upon for mission-critical information or dispatch, nor should you count on them being available during emergencies where network congestion around the incident could hamper first responders’ access to the commercial networks. However, I believe that gaining experience with LTE broadband services and capabilities now is important and will help you and your department to be better prepared to add LTE broadband services to your existing voice and slow-speed Land Mobile Radio systems. You notice I said “add” to your existing voice systems. The Public Safety LTE broadband network is, first and foremost, about augmenting your voice capabilities and not replacing them.

Yes, work is being done and standards are being written to implement Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and I am sure you are aware that Metro PCS is offering VoLTE today, while Verizon is not far from introducing it. However, while VoLTE is dial-up voice for phone calls, it is not one-to-many, nor is it mission-critical in nature. It certainly does not support off-network, simplex, or talk-around. If and when voice over the Public Safety broadband network comes, it will be sometime into the future. The future varies depending on whose point of view you subscribe to. There are those who believe it will be real as early as 2015 or 2016 but I am more conservative believing that it will come in three stages: non-mission-critical push-to-talk by 2015, mission-critical PTT by 2018-19, and PERHAPS off-network or simplex by 2020 or beyond. In the meantime, continue to invest in your existing LMR systems and give LTE a try on one of the commercial networks.

How do you choose which network? Make sure the one you choose provides you with the best coverage in your area—network operators’ coverage varies from market to market. Don’t expect the same level of coverage your LMR system gives you, but do test the system. One way I have found to determine the network with the best coverage is to outfit paramedics and have them report on coverage. They usually go to more locations more quickly than any of your other first responders. Every network will give you some demo units to try out. Once you have chosen the best network for you, don’t tell them you have made the decision but negotiate a price as if they are competing against at least one if not two other network operators. Remember, they all want your business and at this point you are in the driver’s seat. Work with the network operators and they will work with you—make sure you have the best possible deal you can make.

Don’t rely on it, but try it. Learn what broadband can and cannot do. Broadband should be looked upon as a new tool to make first responders safer, to assist the citizens better and faster, and to cut down on the voice traffic on your network. There is a learning curve for sure, but if you start now with commercial network operators, you should be ready when the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network comes to your county, city, or town.

Andrew Seybold

These people will be policymakers functioning only as a board of directors and others will be needed to actually run the organization. The people chosen for these positions and their compensation levels will be the key to the success or failure of the NPSBN. The people needed for the CEO, COO, CTO, and CFO-type of positions reporting to the FirstNet board need to be high-level, skilled people who have been involved in planning and setting up a broadband network and handling the finances, technology, and operational aspects of such a system.

These people must be recruited from within the wireless industry, preferably from among those who have “already been there and already done that.” In order to attract the quality of people needed, I believe their compensation level will have to be well beyond Federal Executive Level 4. As an independent authority, FirstNet employees should not report to the NTIA, they should report to the FirstNet board. The executives chosen to head up FirstNet and report to the board of directors are critical to the success of the network. If Federal employees with little or no real-world experience are appointed to these positions, at normal Federal government pay scales, the likelihood for the network’s success will be greatly diminished. FirstNet needs to take a page out of the establishment of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is a similar type of company also established by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In November of 1998, the Department of Commerce officially recognized ICANN as the organization that would inherit the responsibility for managing Internet names and numbers.

The NTIA is located within the U.S. Department of Commerce, which essentially makes it part of the Commerce Department. I bring up ICANN here because its C-level executives are not paid based on Federal guidelines. They are paid salaries commensurate with the private sector to attract the best, most qualified executives. For example, the new CEO has a three-year contract at $800,000 per year; other C-level executives are compensated along the same lines. The ICANN Compensation information sheet published in July 2011 states:

“The overarching objective of ICANN’s remuneration framework is to ensure remuneration provided is competitive globally and that it provides staff with appropriate motivation for high performance towards agreed objectives. The remuneration philosophy aims to:

• Attract and retain high caliber staff
• Ensure it is competitive
• Ensure it is transparent

Additionally, ICANN uses private sector compensation items such as

• At risk (bonus) eligibility based on position and achievement of goals and objectives
• Time off benefits (vacation, holiday, sick time, bereavement, jury service, and the like)
• Health and welfare benefits (medical, dental, vision, life insurance, accidental and dismemberment, and the like)
• Retirement benefits
• Housing allowance”

I am not suggesting that FirstNet C-level executives’ salaries should be based on ICANN compensation, but rather that this type of compensation and terms should be used as guidelines. In order to attract the brightest and best, they must be compensated well, commensurate with the commercial wireless industry. The best of all worlds would be to recruit executives who have worked on the design, building, implementation, and operation of a fourth-generation wireless network. There are a number of well-qualified individuals who would welcome both the opportunity and the challenge to work on this network.

FirstNet should be viewed as a startup. If we look back at the history of wireless networks in the United States, we will find that the most successful of them started out with very strong C-level management in their early days. Some examples are Craig McCaw and his team at McCaw Cellular; Jai Bhagat and team, founders of SkyTel; John Stanton, T-Mobile and VoiceStream; Denny Strigl, Ameritech Mobile and then Verizon Wireless; Dick Lynch, Verizon Wireless; Michael Armstrong, AT&T; and a host of others. It took their vision and understanding to build what are today’s successful commercial networks and FirstNet will be facing the same challenges, so it makes sense to hire the best of the best to get the job done.

FirstNet has to design, build, and operate what is termed a “greenfield network,” that is, a new network from the ground up, on spectrum that is not encumbered by others. While FirstNet can certainly benefit from past experiences, it would be better to have some of those who built these networks, managed the finances, and managed both the construction and operation of a major, nationwide network in positions of authority, reporting to the FirstNet board. I believe that if the C-level positions within FirstNet are simply made available at Federal pay scale levels, to existing Federal employees looking to add to their resumes, the chance of this network coming together and being successful will be greatly at risk. There is funding available, and in reality, hiring capable people who have already been successful in designing and building a network will save money in the long run by reducing the number of missteps, bringing the network up sooner, and attracting paying customers more quickly. If FirstNet is to be successful, it must become self-supporting. To do that, it will need to attract as many Public Safety agencies (and perhaps other first responders) as quickly as possible, and provide the type of service they are expecting. Any less and the network will languish, not being used to its full advantage.

We are all waiting, patiently, for the Secretary of Commerce to announce the members of the FirstNet board, but many of us are also looking ahead to the multiple tasks FirstNet will have to accomplish in a very short time. This means, to me, that as important as those who will serve on the FirstNet board of directors are, their choices for the executives who will work toward the design, implementation, and operation of the network are critical. If FirstNet does not hire and compensate the best, those with experience and who have already been successful in the broadband world, the network will suffer and those within the Federal Government and elsewhere who were opposed to building and funding this network will be able to point to the failure as proof of their convictions.

Public Safety NEEDS this network, now more than ever. Many within the Public Safety community have worked at their own jobs and given time and energy to get this far. We cannot afford to jeopardize these efforts by not having the right people in the right jobs at the right compensation.

Andrew M. Seybold

Some of you subscribe to my COMMENTARY and TELL IT LIKE IT IS blog as well as this e-newsletter. If you subscribe to the COMMENTARY, you just received my latest one, “Incentive Auctions: A plan for Success.”

I think this is also important for the Public Safety Community since these auctions will provide most of the $7 billion in funding for the Public Safety Broadband Network. For this reason alone, these auctions need to be a success. Below are the first two paragraphs of the commentary and a link to the full article.

Andy

More broadband spectrum is needed for the commercial operators, but where will it come from? The FCC has pledged to “find” (meaning reallocate) 500 MHz of spectrum within ten years from when it presented its National Broadband Plan to Congress in the spring of 2010. Where will it come from, who will lose what they are using today, and how long will it take? One set of answers may be found in the reallocation of spectrum now being used by TV stations around the nation.

The FCC has been authorized to conduct “incentive auctions” in the existing TV spectrum. The incentive part of the auction means that any TV station that voluntarily gives up its 6 MHz in the upper portion of the TV spectrum will share in the proceeds from the sale and will be able to relocate lower in the TV band if it so desires.

Rest of the article here