By Dave Buchanan, FirstNet Director of State Consultation
On November 13th, FirstNet conducted its seventh initial consultation meeting and the first outside of the continental United States. More than 120 state and local municipality representatives from Puerto Rico joined the FirstNet consultation team in Rio Piedras to discuss their unique communications planning needs for the public safety broadband network in the territory.
Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency Director Miguel Ríos Torres, who is also Puerto Rico’s single point of contact (SPOC) for FirstNet, started the session by encouraging attendees to take advantage of this opportunity to engage with FirstNet officials. The police, fire, EMS, and emergency management personnel in attendance did just that, and what followed was an engaging and productive meeting. The FirstNet team and I also enjoyed the many one-on-one discussions we had with local public safety officials during breaks.
As we have been doing at these state meetings, the FirstNet team provided a general overview of the consultation and planning process and then moved to a “deeper dive” on issues specific to the host state or territory. For Puerto Rico, FirstNet State Plans Director Rich Reed, discussed the different considerations and steps that go into the development of the territory’s final plan. During Rich’s presentation, one public safety official said that a potential benefit of the network is that it could provide first responders with connectivity during emergencies and other instances when commercial networks are often congested.
Puerto Rico Chief Information Officer Giancarlo Gonzalez, who is also advisor to Governor Alejandro García Padilla, provided an update on broadband coverage in Puerto Rico and showed some of the open data sets and tools that are publically available on their website, data.pr.gov. After Giancarlo, FirstNet’s Brian Hobson delved into the issues of users and coverage, which generated plenty of dialogue around hardening and reliability for hurricanes and coverage challenges in remote locations, such as Puerto Rico’s islands.
Throughout the course of the meeting, we heard from several local officials about “real world” examples of communications challenges during emergencies and large public events. This included an island wide power outage in 2005 that shut down emergency communications, vulnerabilities to tsunamis and hurricanes, and the San Sebastian street festival, which draws 250,000 people and often overloads the commercial networks. As we have seen at previous consultation meetings, these examples havehelped us better understand a state or territory’s public safety communications challenges and needs.
On behalf of FirstNet I would like to thank all of the Puerto Rico public safety officials who attended the meeting on November 13th, as well as the live-interpreter who helped facilitate the discussion. I also want to thank Puerto Rico’s Statewide interoperability Coordinator (SWIC) Felix Garcia, and his team for coordinating and executing the consultation meeting.
Thanks,
-Dave
View photos of the consultation meeting below:
