I applaud the Federal Government for its approval of the 700 Mhz and the mandate to go LTE for the Public Safety Broadband network. This is a monumental event in opening up a market place that will dwarf the size of the commercial carrier business.

There are a few things to point out that this legislation will open up:

1. With the consolidation of the commercial carriers this opens the opportunity to control the commoditization of Internet Access. The commercial carriers are alway talking about the cost aspect of the infrastructure they maintain and how it does not justify the commoditized access model…which is correct. The consolidation of the technology to “All IP” means that the network infrastructures can operate at cheaper capital and operational models, but the infrastructure they own is so overly built with the old TDM fabrics that they are cost prohibited to advancement. So the answer is to sell it all off and restart with the new; or just move out of the commoditized access model all together and into content. Content is where the real cash is anyway….the carriers know this.

2. Allowing the Utilities to play in the Public Safety Spectrum space. What better spot to be than an already commoditized access model as the Power Distribution companies. I would definitely sign up to add Internet Access to my monthly electric bill. By opening these LTE networks to the Public Safety entities…don’t get me wrong the first models of deployment and service are strictly for Public Safety….but in the future with the advancement into 3GPP rev 10 there will be way more bandwidth than the Public Safety entities will need (to include Utilities). It will become apparent that the LTEs traffic isolation capabilities will allow for the addition of private based access models to the customers of the Utilities and what better place than the Utilities space to do commoditization. Which in the end is good for us all…to include Public Safety. Why isn’t Internet Access rated as a Utility anyway? Maybe that is why each State has a PUC — Public Utility Commission to which Utilities and Telecom are scrutinized.

3. By allowing the Public Safety arena to include players like Utilities only makes the ability to fund the program even easier. Although each State will undoubtedly have to build their own solution for the Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN) it will be crucial that they abide by the strict standardization of the Core platforms (better known as eNodeBs). This will allow the Federal authorities to control the core aspects of the network and administer the Public Land Mobile Numbers (PLMN Ids) that identify the Cores. It will also allow for a centralized Federal platform as hinted to in recent press clippings (a Centralized Broadband Network Authority). But what is most important is the States ability to find alternative funding sources to Federal and State Tax dollars through Public Private Partnerships.

4. As was depicted and validated in my dissertation back in 2009 (its published in the EBSCO database if you want to read it) the best possible scenario for advancing telecommunications within the vertical industries, to include sectors such as Public Safety, Mass Transit and Utilities, is through Public Private Partnerships. In essence you allow for the Public Utility and Public Safety entities to partake in the investment communities capability to self fund their own builds. In essence, a State has the option to setup a third party entity, local to the State, that can oversee and run the new Broadband LTE network. As potential investors they could include private, commercial or Public Entity investors to help fund the new third party entity setup for the State. Some of those entities may, in exchange, offer up tower infrastructure or fiber (as an example) to offset their funding capabilities, such as: Utilities allowing the network to be build on their already, and vast, infrastructure of towers and distributed fiber networks. Most importantly the entity created by the State would build revenue based off long-standing contracts with any entity that rides their network. this also allows for those entities to eliminate any capital construction costs associated with having to build their own network. Being that the spectrum is scarce, and the fact that the Public Safety industry itself relies so heavily on State and Federal tax dollars, this makes for a proven manner of self funding. The beauty of this solution is that any State could model this in a hundred different ways yet still maintain the standard process of inclusion and oversight to insure itself safety and administration.

More to come later.

The Senate just passed the legislation creating the First Responder Network Authority to build the nations first responder broadband network utilizing the D-Block spectrum there allocated. Another important aspect is that Public Private Funding is a feature to be considered in the bill. Under section SEC. 6208. PERMANENT SELF-FUNDING; DUTY TO ASSESS AND COLLECT FEES FOR NETWORK USE.  In essence it grants the Authorities right to commence Public Private Partnerships utilizing leasing agreements with entities that wish to access the newly established Public Safety Broadband Network. 


This is good news. 

Just read an interesting article on the LA-RICS debacle going on. (ref: http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardminiter/2012/02/17/obamas-next-solyndra-style-scandal-is-called-la-rics/)

The one thing I can garner from all this “we have to spend the money now” scenario is that there are too many chiefs in the fire…no pun intended. Those responsible for trying to drive this solution to fruition are too mired in all the antics of spending the cash instead of realizing that the answer lies in just building the LTE portion of the solution. After all, the LMR and the device aspects of the program are not the driving factor and thus should be eliminated as a requirement in the initial stages. By going forth with the LTE deployment you will have the baseline infrastructure to building out the Public Safety network. Award the contract and spend the money on the design phase of the LTE solution; then deployment, then sustainment. Following this pause then start the integration of the LMR and device service sets. The LMR and devices are not driving the need to go to LTE. LTE is driving the OEMs to create LTE enabled devices thus the market generation is already happening. Stop worrying about the technical aspects of LMR interfacing. Those needs will be met. Whats important to to drive the OEM demand to build those features into LTE not the other way around.

Another key issue I see is the Public Safety side trying to gain all the momentum by being the main decision maker in the process. By doing so will only hamper the progress of building the right solution. In the end LMR will not go away and the old way of doing business will still exist; just because the radio solution is an entrenched and heavily utilized technology. Given time things may change but for the time being we can expect that there will always be a radio solution.

With that said, its essential that we understand that there is a solution to the “worry about spending the federal cash”, that is not spending it at all. Rather we need to include such entities as the Power Utilities, large investors, to generate an investor owned LTE broadband solution to support all the Public Safety concerns. As covered in earlier topics the LA-RICs (and all state initiatives to deploy LTE for Public Safety) should utilize a Public-Private-Partnership arrangement rather than try to wait on Federal or State Tax dollars that come with strings attached.

It’s interesting to hear that the State of New Jersey just pulled its RFP to build a broadband LTE network for the Public Safety. My gut feelings are that the State realizes that you can’t mix all the requirements of radio based LMR type services, device requirements and a full deployment of LTE. It needs to be in stages and my guess would be a new solicitation separating the LMR, LTE and device requirements. Make sense that you can build your LTE solution without the requirements of LMR or the devices and still get the network to support all those features in the future. Unless, of course, they do a Public-Private solution.

Correction on the ALU layoffs: Seems that it may be a rumor that happened to get national press coverage. Time will tell.

As I predicted in earlier writings the consolidation is starting to take affect now within the OEMs. Why does this matter; mainly because the tradition has been for clients within the Public Safety space, i.e. States, Utilities and Public Safety entities, to ask the OEMs to bid on their projects and then build their solutions. As I stated earlier this is the wrong model to move forward with. There exist only a few “real hands on” LTE and telecom integrators in the United States and the OEMs do not consider themselves the “Integrators”. The OEMs want to focus on their product lines. Why because the product lines are the main source of revenue for these organizations, thus they will cut nonessential services that support that cause, i.e. delivery organizations that are being asked to design, build, operate and maintain these Public Safety projects. There is an answer though! Should not be the OEMs though.

Another interesting topic is the funding sources for such DBOM projects. The clients should search for a venture capitalist type model of a public-private ownership rather than trying to get an OEM to fund it. We have to take away the link of the equipment driving the business model. We need to focus on the business model of the entire network and what it can generate when it comes to revenue. By driving these solutions from the vendor standpoint there is only one aspect of that business model being met …. that being the Vendors business model. Did you know that any given large-scale project such as the LTE deployments for Public Safety is more than 70% project management, construction management and design and is less than 15% related to vendor equipment? And out of the 15% (which is multi-vendor) less than 3% is related to only one vendor? That means that if a client, such as BayRICS, uses the Motorola solution as the prime for its project, then Motorola really only has about a 3% stake in their equipment within that program. More than 70% of the entire program will relate to other contractor entities who will only share their piece of the risk. In the end I don’t know who is worse off…the vendor or the client in this case? In the end when Motorola needs to cut people and focus on product sales who will be left holding the project bag on this one?

Just my 2-cents.

Dr. Michael Myers

ALU – Alcatel-Lucent restructuring impacts public-safety team – Equipment …

NSN – NSN to lose 23% of staff in restructuring | Global Telecoms Business

Ericsson – Ericsson’s Slide Confirms Capex Fears for Mobile Infrastructure Companies
                 Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg doesn’t rule out staff cuts in wake of industry’s …

Huawei – Huawei banned from building public-safety LTE networks …