It may be just me, but has anybody else noticed that all the States that have received BTOP and spectrum lease agreements are termed “Blue” States? It’s just an observation. Yes, I know Texas has their spectrum lease as well, but it’s only a 90-day lease and has to be renewed. Plus, Texas didn’t take any BTOP money, so you would think it would be easy for Texas to get their spectrum in that FirstNet, and the NTIA, don’t have to worry about the use of Federal dollars, and technically you only have a few options when it comes to the LTE provider, so what’s all the fuss? Well in the case of Texas it may be the perception of being a Motorola shop. That perception tends to scare people away, which would include your ability to get fair and balanced proposals from the industry in order to build your solution, but I digress.

Could there be an administrative ploy or alternative agenda? Someone has to ask. After all, could you imagine what would happen if Texas got their Lease Agreement holistically signed, that is covers the entire State, and is ready for the build-out? As a friend pointed out to me today, at the moment the animal is caged, if you let the animal out they will start to breed everywhere and eventually the owner would lose control of trying to manipulate the animals into domestic servitude. For some reason a pen full of pigs with red lipstick comes to mind. Do I have to layout the analogy here?

The point is that perception is everything when dealing with government related programs, and at the moment it is starting to become clear that the States, who happen to be blue (Democratic majority) are the ones getting their approvals, and the so called “Red States” are not. It’s just an observation at this point in time and may be just coincidental, but is it? Is the plan for FirstNet being intentionally wired so that a Blue version of the FirstNet Broadband Network is forced onto the Public Safety community? Or does it just happen to be going that way because the ideas of the Administration more align with the philosophical mindset of the Blue State? To me it could be perceived that the prior version may actually be the plan, allow me to explain.

Remember, this is just an observation and shouldn’t be construed as a doomsday theory, if you read the legislation that was passed (Middle Class Tax Relief and Jobs Creation Act of 2012), which released the spectrum to Public Safety, it actually had some hidden gems of direction written into the Act.  If I were road-mapping the actions to take for the next 5-10 years, I would want to prepare the design, and its rollout, according to my long-term plans as to entrench the entire solution into “my” long-term goals. I would do this because, essentially, no one can change my plans once it gets started, such as, a change in the administrative mindset from blue to red. These little gems, plus the lack of a business model — or maybe a model that nobody knows about — may lend itself to setting up just such a long-term deal. In this case you start building the network based on the relationship and support from those States that align with your mindset, and your long-term strategy, so that it becomes so arduous and insidious that once it gets going, it will be too hard to change. Or is it simply the spoils of war?

By the time this network really gets going, it will be the election year, which could mean disaster is unavoidable if the Feds are going to try and deliver the network. It’s always quite complicated when you try to change horses mid-way through a race, especially when you have an election coming up.  I have a hard time seeing Bill D’Agostino, GM for FirstNet, trying to work such a plan, plus he wasn’t around when the legislation was written. If others had planned the rollout in this manner, there is one thing they did not fully explore…. that is the “Public Private Partnership” model.

There are literally hundreds of ways you can administer a Public Private Partnership (P3), but the only model that will truly work in this instance, is the same capitalistic model the telecom industry uses; that is to monetize the use of the spectrum and then apply it’s architecture outside of the business case of the Public Safety’s responsibility, yet, at the same time specifically built for their needs, thus the “Public Safety Services Organizations” nomenclature for available users.  This means that the Act changed the mindset of just the  “Public Safety Organizations” probably because they realized, long before FirstNet was created, that in order for their plan to work they need to tie it to the fabrics of our society that are already entrenched with government regulations and administration, such as Municipal Utilities or Transportation Authorities. But I don’t think they, the people who formulated the Acts strategy, truly realized the power of ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit when it comes to a true Public Private Partnership and the monetary value of the spectrum, or maybe they did?

As an example, the strategy may have failed to account for such entities as Investor Owned Utilities, or the Electric Cooperatives, who have their own infrastructure and requirements to please shareholders.  The potential users are in the business of delivering power at the same time they have complex telecommunication needs and are usually the first people called (by the Police I might add) to respond to a natural disaster. The Utility would find it more advantageous to buy from the State based P3 for its truly hardened telecom needs, not the flimsy carrier network, or worse yet a government run public safety network. If the government run network becomes the business model then the Utilities, especially the Investor Owned Utilities, will have a hard time getting access because the government mechanism will undoubtedly create silo’s of First Responders which will mean a stretch in defining Utilities as part of that group. Imagine being an electric cooperative that has to invest 100 Million into building your own broadband solution to meet SMART Grid demands mandated by the Department Of Energy (DOE), you have no spectrum and there is no foreseeable dedicated spectrum to come, wouldn’t it be easier to put that money back into load-sharing and fixate your bottom line to a much smaller OPEX model at the same time still meeting DOE demands? The only way to achieve this is with a capitalistic model of venture-funded program monetizing the spectrum for the State, just like a carrier.

There is no other model that will completely fund, both the long-term and short-term capital needs; reach 100% statewide coverage; build revenue for the State and the P3 while avoiding taxpayer money; as well as diligently meeting FirstNet technical standards. Plus, it’s just better for the State.

If you build and deploy this network on a holistic national model, we will be forced into a carrier comparison, which ultimately means we would have to compete on subscriber based cost-per-handset model that will undercut your ability to get enough money to fund your long-term plans and short term capital initiatives.  We simply can’t build this on the subscriber model when the handset manufacturers keep cutting prices even lower, how will you pay for the deployment of LTE? How do you convince a Police Chief that he should buy service from FirstNet when he already gets fixed monthly service for $35 per month and a $10 dongle from the carrier? The only way to overcome this is to give the service, and the handset, for free, and you can only make that happen in the P3 model…not the government run model, unless of course we tax the American people which will be predominately on the shoulders of the States…. again. A government run model, by comparison, will have to compete with service already rendered, but in reality they will need to charge thousands of dollars per-monthly-charge in order to account for the money needed to pay for the deployment. Don’t know about you but my toilet costs about $100 bucks not $35,000. This is why, long before FirstNet, the term “Public Safety Service Organizations” was utilized, and someone had a plan, and a strategy, and knew that such a network would build a powerful, all encompassing, federal agency.

So why is it that only “Blue” States have their Spectrum Lease Agreements and their BTOP money released?

Once again, it’s just an observation from none other than….

Just some guy and a blog….

Dynamic Spectrum Arbitrage for FirstNet?

In order to get a feel for what “Dynamic Spectrum Arbitrage” is lets take a look at the patents Abstract below: (ref: Patent application title: Methods and Systems for Dynamic Spectrum Arbitrage. 20120014332)

Ok, who wants to be the first Ginny Pig on this? This is the issue with this theory, let alone the fact that it’s still a theory. This doesn’t discount the idea that the theory won’t work, or is invalid, this just asks the question as to who wants to be first to deploy the technology; then wait a few years for a standard to be produced; then commit to a vendor negotiated procurement process for the best solution? It may be just me, but wouldn’t that take a lot of time away from getting the Public Safety Broadband Network built?

It is a written requirement within the legislation that FirstNet must utilize “Commercial Off-the-Shelf Technology” — or COTS for short. The reason being is that we don’t want to deploy a network that is bleeding edge; we require a network that is on the leading edge.  This means the technology must have a proven and standing track record in order to be deployed.

Plus, here’s the thing, why would we consider dynamic allocation of spectrum anyway? The LTE technology can, in effect, deliver Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA), which has been a proven technology for many years. Just seems like wasted time and money. You can look at any Wave Division Multiplexing device, or Ethernet Transport solution, and see DBA at work. Basically, it see’s the spectrum as a big pipe and allocates traffic in the packetized environment over QoS (Quality of Service) or CoS (Class of Service)  tagging protocols, but that’s just me getting my techie on. I would not expect that a radio engineer would understand the packetized solutions as they were designed.

Dynamically allocating spectrum is a technology that would have prospered 40 years ago, but today we have moved beyond and up the protocol stack towards bandwidth allocation utilization, plus, it allows us to better prioritize traffic across multiple users, or virtual managed networks, especially as we connect to cloud based services. You should note that as the LTE network gets deployed, all of its users, i.e. Police, Fire, Utilities, transportation, essentially would have their own Virtual Private Network running over the bandwidth that LTE delivers. Trying to prioritize each user based on available spectrum will be tedious at best. For the COTS available Public Safety Broadband Network this is how the LTE Core will manage its user base for prioritization, much easier than being a test-bed for a new theory in RF technology.

Excerpt on Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation: (Wiki)

But then again….

I’m just some guy and a blog….

Hear me out here. Much like the High Speed Rail program in California, there are many obstacles that impede the progress of getting anything done in California, let alone in the LA area. Some credit is due to Pat Mallon on his efforts to keep the ball rolling with the LA-RICS program, much like those that are pushing for the High Speed Rail Program. In my personal view California needs the high-speed rail solution, have you driven in LA lately, let alone have you tried to get on an airplane. Having traveled on the high-speed rail systems in many different countries, the United States is way behind. When overseas, I would much rather take the train any day over flying…. it’s so comfortable and quite, it’s like your gliding on a smooth surface of ice with absolutely no bumps. Technically though, even the High Speed Rail program in California will require the use of broadband technology – or LTE. Why not FirstNet, but that’s another article I wrote about last year, or the year before, I digress.

Getting back to LA-RICs: to summarize the history, the program was originally started as a BTOP LMR project, whereas Raytheon, and Motorola, were the finalist on the bids. Raytheon was actually selected as the awardee, but through some background work Motorola protested. The RFP was re-advertised due to some improper actions (not sure what they were) whereas Motorola and Raytheon competed again, and then came along Public Safety Broadband, or LTE.

Seeing the collision of the LTE and the LMR technologies, it was decided to bid the two programs under one umbrella (you might add that it also included over 600 buildings for DAS as well) while still using the BTOP grant, so Motorola and Raytheon competed again, only this time it was a voluminous RFP response that covered both an LMR and LTE design footprint. You should note, that it cost a lot of money for these vendors to put this information together, and it’s even harder when the economy isn’t doing so well. The contract went into negotiations and it was about to be awarded to Motorola when FirstNet stepped in. The FirstNet organization had differing opinions on what the BTOP should be used for, so the BTOP program was frozen, but only for the LTE portion.  So, once again Pat Mallon and the JPA (Joint Powers Authority) had to re-bid the RFP, but this time it was only for the LMR portion. They decided to separately bid the LTE portion, which should have been the decision in the first place, but who’s complaining?

Eventually Motorola and Raytheon were the only respondents for the LMR bid, in that no one else wanted to bid because of the long history behind the previous bids. Why compete for a bid when you know the vendor has been talking, negotiating, bidding and re-bidding the same design that was already approved some time ago? Makes the case for non-competitive practices if you ask me, but once again who’s paying attention. Then came the real bid everyone was interested in – the LTE Public Safety Broadband Network.

The RFP for the LMR was eventually awarded to Motorola over the initial awardee Raytheon. As you can imagine this caused some friction in the market, and made for a bad taste in the competitive framework, but, the JPA moved forward on Pat Mallon’s recommendation to re-bid the LTE portion as a separate program and awarded the LMR to Motorola.

The LTE portion of the LA-RICS program is 252 greenfield, 70-foot, monopole locations on Police and Fire station land, reasons being is that they believe leasing and zoning will go smoother. In reality though, leasing and zoning still has to go through local zoning boards anyway, even if the site is on Police and Fire station properties. In my opinion, a majority of the sites will not have an issue, but as is the case for site acquisitioning, you always have holdouts that create a massive amount of frustration and delay. Building the tower is easy…or is it? You should note, that more than 80% of the 252-site build-out has to do with construction and absolutely nothing to do with Public Safety, so why have a vendor as your contractor at risk? Shouldn’t you be talking with a major construction company? Plus, it’s usually not the sight of a tower that the City Councils are concerned about, it’s usually the construction activity and impedance on traffic. Yet, another article I wrote about sometime ago.

The LA-RCIS program has to be completed by the end of 2015, or they risk losing their BTOP funding, which was conditionally released to LA, along with the use of the spectrum. Houston, anyone can see that we may have a problem here (no pun intended for our Harris County guys and gals). If everything goes as planned, and there are absolutely no issues to deal with, the program has to be awarded in the first quarter of 2014, or they risk impacting the timeline. We have to remember that we’re talking about 252 sites in the LA basin, in a 14-month schedule, that means you have to build, at a minimum, 21 sites a day to meet the goal of completion. That’s 21 different crews driving concrete around the LA area, hauling 70-foot towers on the back of semis, in the LA traffic, trenching dirt in a small confined space, which the base of these towers go 36 feet down into the earth and will take a minimum of a week to cure the concrete; 21 separate tower contractors to install the towers, install and connect the power; 21 crews of tower contractors to install the LTE antennas and conduct site clearance, LOS, coverage drive-by analysis; and a hoard of contractors trying to put together the innards of the control centers, data centers and the interoperability requirements that will be essential to getting the network up and running. I hope there are no issues with the RF analysis, especially when you are at a 70 foot ceiling on your coverage umbrella. Do you know how many buildings are taller than 70 feet? To give you a hint, it’s roughly 14 feet per floor. What about all those Spruces, don’t they sway in the wind?  If the RF analysis gets into trouble then the whole thing is shot.  But what could go wrong?

What happens if the City Council of Malibu doesn’t like having a 70-foot monopole within its city limits, regardless if it is on Police or Fire land? At a minimum it will take a month for each site to get its clearance… can someone add up the timeline for 252 sites that need to get clearance from local zoning boards? Remember we have concrete, 70-foot towers, backhauls and antennas that have to get installed within 14-months, and they can’t move, or be fabricated, without proper clearance, or, the “contractor at risk” is exposed to liabilities.

But, we are where we are, that is the LA-RICS program has two bidders — supposedly. Who wants to bet on whether or not Motorola is one of those bidders? You should note that Raytheon dropped out of bidding a few months ago, so did Parsons, so did NSN, as well as Alcatel-Lucent, but why?  It’s just a guess, but through my observations that leaves General Dynamics (IPWireless LTE) and Motorola (Ericsson LTE) as the likely bidders. Good luck on the Terms and Conditions!

In the end, have you ever come across someone who wanted to just get something done so badly that they would go to any lengths to move it forward no matter what the obstacles may be, good or bad? To me it sounds a lot like a website. 🙂

I’m more than just someone who can point out the issues, I’m also a person who also has answers, but I’ve been beating this dead horse for sometime now. In my opinion the LA-RICS team needs to have FirstNet ease up on the time constraints, so that they can truly install a system and solution that works all the way around. They need time to relook at their cost model, the revenue approach and the means to sustain their solution for the long haul. We can’t just have another program, funded by the taxpayers, that starts to fall apart just because we think we have to have it done yesterday. Why yesterday? Why not today and tomorrow? There is a solution for California, we just need to get the right party to take control.

I am really hoping for the best for Pat Mallon, and his team, they are the first to build the PSBN solution for a full county, and the country. My suggestion would be to stand back for a moment, re-look at your objectives, and think like a broadband entrepreneurial for the LA area, it’s not an LMR network, and it’s way more than just Public Safety. This LTE network will eat your lunch when it comes to cost of maintenance and operations, let alone upgrades.

But who am I…

Just some guy and a blog….