Month: July 2012

Public Safety Broadband and the State’s right to Opt-Out…a new word in the dictionary

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

There are many things that come to mind when I hear the word “opt out”. The first thing that comes to mind is the time I said no to an offer on my house only to watch the market crash and have to sell it for 25 grand less than the original offer. 
As part of the legislation for the Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN) is the right for the State’s to “opt-out” and build their own portion of the PSBN.  I don’t believe the Feds are making an offer; but instead, took the notion out of context in that there really is no “opt out” option.  
One must consider the fact that the State will have to take on a majority of the build anyways because they are physically located where the PSBN must be installed. More than 90% of the entire requirement to build the PSBN will have to physically execute from a local standpoint. Outside of design, governance and procedures for execution, which can be handled by FirstNet, the entire requirement for project management, project controls, engineering, contractor controls, on-site testing, and yes the Core connectivity, are just examples of some of the activities that will have to happen at the local State level. So why wait? If you wait it only puts more strain on the States financial and contracting resources – a strain that is having deep impacts on the State’s resources during this day’s market and economic conditions. 
Why does a State have to Opt-out at all? It’s naïve to believe that FirstNet will be able to do the entire program without the help of the States… and vice versa. Estimates currently put this network (when completed) to be around 70-100 Billion dollars. That’s more than twice the cost of the assets for Verizon and AT&T. The commercial carriers target 96% of the population; the PSBN has to target 98% total geographic mass of the United States. To believe that a single-vendor, single contractor, RFP solution will work may be ill-conceived…if not at least challenged in court due to non-compete and anti-competitive practices. It will have to happen at the State level. There are too many state and federal agencies involved. 
Anyone who has helped design, build, manage and maintain large complex networks can easily tell you that there are a number of things that have to be done way before we deploy a single box. For example: States have to take inventory of their existing assets; issue orders for other State agencies to take inventories. States have to align internal agencies as to who are viable Public Safety elements (and there are a lot more than you think). States have to coordinate and plan their Public Private Partnership for capital. The requirement for site acquisition alone will be complex in that multiple State entities, who will have access to the PSBN, will be integrating thousands of new or existing optimal sites for antennas, DAS and LMR solutions. Why wait? If a State doesn’t wait does that mean the PSBN won’t be built…of course it will.
Maybe “opt-out” is the wrong phrase. Maybe it should be stricken from the vocabulary and banned from the PSBN plans all together. It may be just me, but I believe there will exist no “opt out” option. Both the States and Federal Government will have to coordinate across the board anyway.
So what happens if a State does opt out? From what I can ascertain, nothing, it has to happen anyway and it will have to happen locally. So why wait? Of the simplest of terms why not start putting together the States Public Private Partnership? After all, the Public Private Partnership is all about how it gets funded and who its investors are; it has very little do to with the actual technology. In the end the technology will be the same, but how a State funds it will be different…. especially if we think that the Federal Government will magically fund the entire nationwide build out. On an opportunity like this even the simplest private investment strategy, in support of a public-private-parynership, will take longer than twelve months just to get it approved before the first payment happens. So why have to “opt out” at all? By the time a State’s legislative body can read this article the FirstNet Board would have been created. The time to act is now. But that may be just the driver in me. 
Just some guy and a blog….

DAS Deployments for Public Safety Broadband…the forgotten piece to the puzzle.

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

So New York wants to modify all their existing phone booths into Free Wifi Hotspots. This must be a push for equality because the last I heard only the drug dealers and prostitutes used the booths. Now the drug dealers and prostitutes can also get smart phones with data access. That means your common drug dealer can now open up and manage his Craiglist postings with relative ease and unrestricted geographical locations and the prostitute will be able to geo-locate Johns for easy access and corner positioning.
Funniness aside though, DAS (Digital Antenna System) deployments have nothing to do with Wifi. They are actually based on extending the cellular signal (2G, 3G) throughout a restricted location (for the Tier 1 carriers most of the 2G is being replaced with 4G). In essence, if you have a lousy cellular connection at your work…then you can put up a DAS antenna to extend the coverage, buts its primarily used for your cell phone…not your data connection. Although some of the solutions do come with Wifi built-in as well. Of course maybe Femto Cells or some type of homogenous DAS solution could be used. 
As with the complexities of integrating LMR and LTE together for Public Safety, so will extending the digital signal of cellular. As it stands today the LTE technology is mainly driven with IP packet designs, not cellular TDM, therefore one must make design considerations to include them. Although, I believe that most OEMs see this feature as doable; I would imagine that, initially, most of the extended network scenarios forLTE with DAS would be a bandaid of LTE dongles, or hotspots — filling the need for a type of DAS solution — unless the intended DAS deployments are intended to only interface for cellular commercial connectivity. In short, you need your DAS solution to integrate and extend LTE. 
These LTE hotspot tools are different than a DAS cellular extender. They basically extend the LTE signal which is primarily an OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) signal with a little TDM, and based primarily off IP traffic making it data driven…not voice packet driven. Of course I may be wrong, and would love the more technical savvy to educate us, but for now it will have to do. But, either way, building the Public Safety Network based off LTE we will need to cover many such aspects and I don’t believe the Technical Advisory Committee to the FCC, nor the Interoperability Board, have brought these types of ancillary technical design issues to light…yet. 

Case in point: The LA-RICS RFP calls for an LMR, LTE and DAS deployment.
It would be nice to see the tactical and technical plans for deploying the three solutions together. From what I can see their will be no holistic design encompassing an LMR, LTE and DAS solution; which ultimately results in a complex design that requires a wide girth of a footprint and power requirements exploding the initial cost and equipment estimates for the deployments. Plus, what will the management center look like in running simultaneous LMR, LTE and DAS (2G, 3G) technology layers? Could you imagine having swivel chair assignments between three distinct telecommunication solutions that are a business in itself? And we haven’t even started talking about the NOCs or data centers yet.
Just some guy and a blog…..

The NTIAs Impact on the Global Market for LTE and Public Safety

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

Have you noticed lately that the entire market for Public Safety has come to a standstill? I’m talking everything…LMR, P25, LTE, BTOP funds. Its effect is felt nationwide and impacts not only public safety, but also Utilities, Agriculture, Forestry, Transportation and of course the commercial market that designs, builds and generates products to support them.
We are not talking about a simple telecommunication project here. We are talking about shifting the entire telecommunication industry; a move that will inherently evolve horizontally into all adjoining markets. To put it into perspective; if a commercial carrier employs roughly 60,000; supporting a 20+ Billion infrastructure; that interfaces with more than 80 Million customers; and you are looking to build a private network more than twice that size and has a geographic, social and national effect that will impact across multiple industries with Billions of devices (M2M); it may be self evident that we are talking about an entire industry shift – a shift that will be felt on all fronts of its adaptation.   
Why is it that it took the NTIA two weeks to create the Interoperability Board (which has already completed its job), but has to wait until the end of August to create the FirstNet Board? Does the NTIA realize that they are impacting an entire national market that could generate thousands of jobs?
It’s time for the realization of the Federal Governments decision making process could help generate thousands of needed jobs and creating a huge cauldron of money stirring back into the market place. All that is needed is to appoint a small board of 15 individuals. I mean we aren’t talking rocket science here. Politically you would think the President would be all over this trying to get it moving.
Just some guy and a blog…

Carrier Rural Coverage Based Off Public Safety Broadband and Utilities

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

Fulfilling the needs of rural and ultra-urban broadband access for Americans is part of the payroll-tax legislation that reallocates the 700 MHz D Block spectrum to first responders and was put into action by President Obama. I believe the rollout of the Public Safety network is the best-suited in making that a reality. After all it may be just me, but it seems that the commoditization of the Internet Access model is becoming best suited for State Utilities anyways. Allow me to explain.
Now this is a complex argument, but it is a known fact that the carrier market place has been on a steady decline for the last 5-10 years. With the advent of IP Based technologies it is easing the complexity of the core commercial carrier networks that allow for cost cutting reductions in designs and deployments; thus impacting the commercial OEMs who provide equipment and the contractors who build it; which means less complicated gear required and less time to build and maintain. Ultimately the idea of the commercial carrier is to shrink its dependency on the costly maintenance and upgrades of existing infrastructure as to increase profit margin on the services it sells through that infrastructure. To that end the commercial carriers see the possibility to move out of the “access and owning the infrastructure model” all together and more towards owning the content rights to the services themselves. If that is indeed the case then who is best suited to provide the physical access to the services – in essence your Internet access at home?
On the commercial side there will always be the common carrier involved in selling wireless and wireline service; only their imprint may be more of a local or regional carrier rather than the big dogs.  On the private side a new form of access could, and should, be investigated…that being a fixed access model through your Utility provider.  After all, who is better suited to providing commoditized services! Your Utility provider has been handling commoditized energy access for 100 years now. The issue though is the State Public Utility Commissions designed to put a firewall between the commercial and public utility world. But will the impact of the newly created Public Safety Broadband Network be the answer to that?
I foresee the reality of the Utilities having to be a part of the Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN) through its footprint, access to critical services and its First Responder status. It would be ill advised not to allow a State utility to be a part in that they have the money, footprint and infrastructure that could help build such solutions. Plus, imagine if they weren’t and had to get their services from a commercial carrier – a similar carrier to which suffers with massive outages during an earthquake? But, most importantly, they represent a great investment opportunity the Public Private Partnership. If that is the case, and the Utility does take part in the PSBN, then the reality of broadband access to the rural areas becomes the light at the end of the tunnel.
What if the PSBN, setup and managed by FirstNet, actually had the Utility as part of their plans? This would mean that a key part of that partnership would now have the inherent capabilities of a Utility delivering commoditized services. So lets say the entire PSBN gets built and is running based of Public Safety and First Responder needs only. All traffic patterns on that network were secured and patterned in a way as to channelize the critical traffic of communications into prioritized roadmaps. Everything is working fine, then we realize that even at full capacity during a major event we notice that the network is isolated to one area, or region, of the network and barely pushes above 10% of the available bandwidth and coverage. Even though the prioritization schemes are in place, we still notice the underutilization of the network and costs. What if the available and under utilized bandwidth could be used as a revenue option for providing access to the rural areas? And what if the Utilities could be utilized to manage that access through their existing infrastructure of billing and collection platforms? Or better yet…what if the FirstNet (once the national network is built) puts out an RFP to the commercial carriers to pay for access to those same rural customers through the PSBN infrastructure? These are but a few great opportunities I see coming out of this national private network.
But you must always remember that the commercial carriers are inherently moving away from the model of owning their own infrastructure and see a clear path to enhanced revenue margins by selling content instead; thus the opportunity of a Public Utility providing everyone commoditized Internet access, without the demands of revenue and profits, makes for a nice play. Whose to say that even the SPV (special Purpose Vehicle), or public-private partnering entity setup to run the broadband solution, could”t they also provide these services along with its standing long-term contracts and SLAs with State and Federal Agencies? All seem perfectly viable revenue sources for a “self-funded” network.
Just some guy and a blog…that is being read.

Carrier Base Business Model and the Public Safety Broadband Network

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

The Carrier Position
It has been said that the carriers are the “best tool” to implement the National Public Safety Broadband Network. I would assume the notion is to put emphasis on the “best tool” piece. One needs to understand that I am a strong proponent of the carrier business model. Having been in the industry for 25 years I have dealt with many of that major telecom rollouts that are still in place today. Through that experience I have seen the carriers mold into many things, as I’m sure others have as well. Without having to regurgitate that entire historical record of how the carriers have evolved, instead, I would like to show you, through my eyes, where they stand today and where they may be going in the future as it pertains to the Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN)…from a business case perspective.
I am but one view of thousands that see the industry in an “Abilene Paradox” of views. From my stance the carriers have evolved quite successfully in the mindset of their own business model…that business model “to make money off people, or groups, who want telecommunication services that the carrier sells” (Nothing wrong with that business case at all). The entire notion of its survival relies upon the need to balance capital and operational expenses against acquired revenue and shareholder investment. In the end the corporate structure of a shareholder organization, like a commercial carrier, is to appease the shareholders themselves. Therefore, all activities, whether selling services, or leasing bandwidth, from say a Utility or Police Department, is to help support that cause. All “users” are secondary to that cause. When looking at “users” they make up anybody who is buying services – that includes Public Safety, Utilities, etc. In essence it is the embodiment of the commercial carrier that it have a winning business model of efficiency and expertise towards achieving its shareholder goals.
I believe this carrier-based solution to be a great example of capitalistic means that drives our way of life. This is a proven business model with over 50 years of building, and rebuilding, that strives to maintain its core business goals – that being making money for its shareholders. But is it best for the PSBN?
What does the Public Safety Broadband Network need?
There are those that believe that the commercial carriers are the “best tool” to implement the National Public Safety Broadband Network. I revisit that phrase from the opening paragraph to stress the point that the carrier are a great example of technical and tactical execution that should be, must be, studied as to a means of reviewing the past to build the future. The primary, and resounding, difference lies in the underlying business model of what the PSBN, FirstNet Board initially, needs to achieve for its long-term goals. It may be just me, but the PSBN’s primary mission is to establish a strong private network that closely resembles the latest technology that the markets are deploying; but, the characteristics and base elements of who, why, what and when need to be readdressed as to align with the ultimate business goals of the PSBN…not a public carrier business model.
It may be just me, but the overall goal of the PSBN will be to setup a physically seperate-private-hardened network that can insure the “public’s safety” when things go wrong, i.e. earthquakes and massive storms that cause long-term power outages.  If the PSBN were deployed into a corporate structure that drives to a similar structure of execution as a commercial carrier – that is driving shareholder value through a sound business model – then the first thing to look at would be what that service will be and who will be the shareholders.
The service will be broadband access; the shareholders will be the State and Federal entities that need that service. With that said then the primary goal of FirstNet should be the baseline executable architecture of a corporate model to fulfill the shareholder requirements, that being, primarily, the State, Federal and private entities. As part of a Public-Private-Partnership there will also be private shareholders of that network.

The established baseline executable architecture will need to be executed at the State level. So, where as the importance of technical interoperability is important, it is just as important for the fiscal and corporate structure for operability be maintained.  After all, the technical interoperability is really no different from a commercial carrier, minus the necessity to replace existing, and aged, infrastructure that has to be maintained by carriers and that the new PSBN will not have; plus, the framework of a corporate structure is the same, but the alignment of business objectives are drastically different. In essence, the commercial carriers operate for profit; the PSBN will not (primarily). To clarify; the commercial carriers operate on primarily a subscriber-based model for revenue to fulfill shareholder agreements, but the PSBN should operate on a fixed model of long-term annual payments from its clients (shareholders).

What do the “shareholders” look like?
The shareholders of the PSBN public-private network will be the Federal and State agencies that require a hardened network that will not go down during an emergency. This network needs to be built to the standards required by those agencies as to insure they can fulfill their long-term requirements (I term Long-Term SLAs). Alternatively, that network can have no competing commercial business that would impede on that requirement, in essence, prioritization.
As an example: if I am a state power distribution utility (one of many State entities), and I need a broadband network to connect all my SMART meters; and ultimately to sustain my core business of power distribution; then I want to make sure that I have the best suited network that has my needs in mind.
I want a strong, hardened network (that meet my specific requirements), which is long-termed in focus and has the technical viability that will allow me to grow. I also don’t want to have to pay for the needed advancements of the technology curve; I would rather a private entity take on the risk associated with the technical curve. In doing so, I would be much more willing to pay a nominal annual payment versus a capital program to build it myself. I would envision, budgetarily, that I would be willing to pay as much as 10% of the total capital costs it would take me to build and operate my own solution for at least 3-5 years out. So, if I spend roughly 500 Million to build a similar solution, then another 50 Million a year to maintain and operate it, then I would be willing to offset the risk and investing into an annual payment of roughly 55-65 Million a year to get the service from the newly State’s private centralized model, or SPV. I would also expect offsets of my infrastructure that I would typically lease as part of this broadband solution. Inclusive to that arrangement I would also like to have the opportunity to invest in the SPV itself.
By joining the shareholders as an investment, I would expect to share in some of the, long-term, recurring revenue from the service rollout itself. In essence, not only would I be willing to set a fixed annual payment to shore up my budgetary requirements on a yearly basis; I would also pay investment dollars, or offset infrastructure sharing as a investment opportunity as a shareholder of that very same network.
This very same concept of an example could be the same vision of any of the State or Federal entities. In essence, I could replace the title utility with being agriculture, transportation, or police. In one case I could be a user, the other case an investor, or both.
In conclusion, as a user, a shareholder, or both, I want to make sure that I am getting what I need in the way of my own business case alignment. I can not risk the alignment with a non-private entity whose interests lay in making revenue, especially when I myself am not in the commercial mode of making revenue; but rather building and sustaining a great, private, network that will insure a more reliable path of communications for both my critical and non-critical forms of communication. A network that will stay in tuned with the advancements of the market, at the same time taking on the risks of the technological curve balls. A network to which I know will be run efficiently, and cost effectively, by a centralized State entity (private) whose primary business model is encased in the necessity to please me as a shareholder by doing nothing but running this private network.
Just some guy whom thinks people are reading his blog… 

SAN FRANCISCO BAYRICS in Purgatory or stung by a Fugu?

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

Dead or Not?
Although not dead, it should be viewed as a time for alignment. It is apparent that any programs that have been awarded need to be maintained in a skeleton fashion until the FirstNet is created in August…and those respective States need to help pay for that skeleton. The positive of this freeze is that those players that have approved projects, i.e. Motorola, will be ready to go once the FirstNet gets things rolling. The only real issue will be whether or not the State, and awardees, followed protocol in open procurement laws. You don’t want to have an award challenged due to anti-competitive procedures because it was done before the FirstNet Board was established. It will be essential for the FirstNet Board establish its guidelines for procurement that can be followed at the State level before commencement of projects happen – to include already awarded programs. This should not be a year in the making; more like 6 months at most.
Technical Alignment
Many people are talking about this taking about a year to get moving — I don’t see that. For those that have already commissioned themselves to start the pilot programs, or the actual rollouts, based on considerations of active RFP procedures, will not be impacted when the ball starts rolling – unless as mentioned above. In essence the design that has been put forth by these RFPs are inline with the FirstNet interoperability and designs. The only issue I would see arising from the technical and tactical implementation is if a State decides to install a later generation of the LTE technology, thus impacted the bleeding edge scenario of non-standardization and conformance. Plus, it will take a good twelve months of site-acquisition and construction before even one radio is deployed.
Time to modify with minimum cost impacts?
I see projects like BayRICS, and LARICS, actually being one step ahead of the others once the gates are open. My only issue with what has transpired has to do with the business case made to help fund and build their solutions, i.e. subscriber based modeling. But even the initial business case is based on the subscriber model it is not a dead deal. It may force you into spending more money later on to make changes, but it won’t have an impact on the technical and tactical necessities when deploying the technology. This may actually be an opportunity for the City of San Francisco, and Motorola, to relook at its business case for BayRICS and LARICS and focus more on a SLA based long-term contract for each of its State entities that need access to the network. This should have absolutely no impact on Motorola’s award. My modeling shows that the SLA model for BayRICs actually brings in more money, and is a hell of a lot easier to deploy, than the subscriber model…but who am I. After all, if consistency across the entire national network is of great importance; then it will be impossible to mitigate the differences between States that build their broadband programs based on a subscriber model versus a State that will go with the more easily adapted long-term contract case. 
Impact on Carriers?
A lot of people ask what impacts the commercial carriers will have on these rollouts. Well, the power outages, and the associated deaths, that just happened in the DC area (over 5 Million affected; Katrina only affected 3 Million), puts another nail into a casket that has already been buried since the last earthquake. The commercial carriers do not build their own networks; they rely on others to do that. What they are good at is running the services on their network, but they run those services to make money, not just spend it to sustain a societal requirement of infrastructure.  It is in my view, an unmistakable view, that the FirstNet, and the States, will have to build, and run, their own networks. Leave the commercial carriers to have access to the broadband subscribers once the network is up and running. After all, if I were a commercial carrier and I didn’t have to spend capital to build a network to access rural areas that don’t have broadband access; and then have them ported to me through a solid and hardening network like FirstNet; should be a no brainer.  That’s almost pure profit — of course it would have to be shared with its infrastructure provider — FirstNet. No different than the Utilities market today.
In short….
Take this time to relook at your business plan for your rollout. Modify it for the long-term with standing 20-30 year contracts for the State entities that need to access the network. Create the SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) of your Public Private Partnerships to run the network for the long-term. Bring in those private partners that have the cash, and the foresight, to go after long-term recurring revenue. 
Just some guy with a blog…