Montana aims to join FirstNet emergency network

When disaster strikes, communication is key for emergency responders. However, communication devices and coordination continues to be a challenge, especially in rural areas like Mineral County. Currently, George Gupton chairs the Mineral County Local Emergency Planning Council and Bryce Nordgren chairs the Emergency Communications subcommittee and is the Amateur Radio Emergency Service coordinator, and these are the topics regularly addressed at their monthly meetings.

However, it’s not just a local problem. In February 2012, a national law was passed which created FirstNet. This law gave FirstNet the “duty to ensure the building, deployment, and operation of the first nationwide public safety broadband network,” providing a single platform for public safety communications. Funding for the project is $7 billion through 2022.

FirstNet is in its planning phase, and states are working to create the system. Montana has a planning committee, which will meet next fall, to hammer out details. Currently, they are asking for input from local governments, emergency and other responsible entities.

At the Emergency Communications subcommittee meeting last week, Nordgren explained what he knew about the project and asked for questions and input that he can forward to the Montana committee. On the national level, each Governor will appoint one Point of Contact and governing body to represent the state’s interests to FirstNet. Nordgren admits there are a lot of unanswered questions as this point and they are still trying to get as much information as possible.

FirstNet is data voice provider, like a smart phone, but it also has public features, primarily an emergency function. In the case of an emergency, only responders would be allowed on the line so public safety doesn’t get overloaded. It consists of Band Class 14 with 20MHz of bandwidth dedicated for public safety in the prime upper 700MHz frequency range.

This would happen using cellphone towers and AT&T won the contract bid. They will use their existing towers and will expand AT&T’s infrastructure to areas they currently don’t reach. One issue discussed during the meeting was whether people with existing accounts such as Verizon, can use their phones and get linked into FirstNet. Nordgren did not have a final answer on this, but felt the systems will probably all be integrated eventually.

FirstNet is an independent authority within the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration. It’s governed by a 15-member Board consisting of the U.S. Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and 12 members appointed by the Secretary of Commerce. It also includes representatives from public safety, local, state and federal government and the wireless industry.

The goal is to have a single communications network which can be used to dispatch EMS personnel, medical vehicles such as helicopters or ambulance, police officers, and fire personnel from different jurisdictions at the same time.

At first, it will supplement existing capabilities, such as Land Mobile Radio (LMR) networks.

“In rural areas, like we have here in Mineral County, these radios are important,” said Nordgren in an earlier report. “They enable people to communicate in areas where their cellphones don’t get service.”

According to their literature, FirstNet will pay for the service and are “responsible for ensuring the building of the network core.”

If a state decides to opt-in and accept FirstNet’s state plan, FirstNet will pay to build out the state’s radio access network (RAN) that will connect to the core. FirstNet will also be financially responsible for the network’s operations and maintenance.

Also in their literature, it states FirstNet Tenet is, “to offer services that meet the needs of public safety at a cost that’s competitive and compelling to users.”

Also, public safety employees will not have to use the service. It will be voluntary, “however, a network built for and dedicated to public safety agencies should provide a dependable and affordable user experience making it an attractive choice for first responders.”

Gupton commented that the county will probably be “force fed” to use it to some extent, “and you can do that as long as you’re not forced to pay for it.”

He also said that there is a lot of great communications systems which are worthwhile, however, “the more complicated you get, the more dependent you are on cell towers and other things like that. I always look at these things and think, “how can you kill it?” and you get really complicated and it’s easy.”

He also remarked that if there are people out with their amateur or CB radios and cell towers are out of commission, they can still communicate.

For example with Ham radios, operators communicate using voice, computers, televisions and Morse code. Signals bounce off the upper regions of the atmosphere, off of satellites and sometimes even off the moon. This allows operators to talk to hams on the other side of the world, or the other side of the county. Making ham operators invaluable during times of disaster.

Nordgren said FirstNet has made a plan that if everything else is cut off, for a deployable action a person could throw a box into a firetruck and everybody within a certain radius of that the cell phone will still work, even if there’s no cell tower.

“You can’t talk far away but you can talk to each other and if you have two boxes, they can talk to each other and various combinations of that and so you can form some sort of linked system.”

The goals of FirstNet is to potentially have 4 million users nationwide in every state, territory and in Washington DC. They hope to provide service to 60,000 public safety agencies, 3,144 counties, and 566 federally recognized tribes in both urban and rural areas.

They are considering a network architecture using land-based cellular, satellite infrastructure and deployable systems to provide coverage using 4G LTE, which is faster than 3G wireless service. The network hopes to be “substantially in operation” by the year 2022.