By Jeff Bratcher, FirstNet Chief Technology Officer
Last week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program held its 7th annual Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder Meeting in San Diego. Once again, it was a great opportunity to share information and exchange ideas on the work being done to further the development of mission critical public safety broadband networks in the U.S. and around the world.
FirstNet Board Chair Sue Swenson delivered the opening keynote, which focused on the strides FirstNet made over the last year including: 1) the release of the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) Request For Proposals; 2) continued direct outreach to public safety across the country; and 3) the further development of the FirstNet organization. Sue also emphasized that important work still remains and urged everyone to begin planning now for the operation of the NPSBN. You can watch Sue’s full keynote here: FirstNet Chair Delivers Keynote at 2016 PSCR
I was honored to also address the meeting attendees during a keynote presentation later in the week. I emphasized in my remarks that while we are now moving forward in the RFP evaluation process, the CTO team continues to work on important research and development of draft network policies for a seamless network build-out; continued close collaborations with the five early builder projects; continued hands-on development of 3GPP standards focused on mission critical services; and the continued push for FirstNet’s Band 14 frequencies within the end user device manufacturers.
In addition, I reviewed the key efforts that we are conducting hand-in-hand with the public safety community and PSCR. It was also a pleasure to participate on a panel regarding international public safety LTE deployment efforts with other experts from the United Kingdom, Korea, Canada, and Sweden. All four of these countries are in various stages of either planning or initial deployments of public safety broadband networks and we look forward to close collaboration with each of them as they move forward.
One take away from the conference was the important work PSCR is now transitioning into. As part of the same legislation that created FirstNet, NIST was allocated specific funding in the amount of $300 million to further and accelerate research and development for public safety broadband technologies. There was much discussion last week on how industry, public safety, and academia will be able to participate in the upcoming prize and challenge competitions.
Dereck Orr, PSCR Division Chief, and his team did a great job in engaging all of the stakeholders and describing how they each have a role to play in this important effort. For example, public safety’s input is necessary to develop the needs and expectations so that the scoping of the prizes and challenges are clear for industry and academia. PSCR announced it will use the U.S. government wide grant challenges program Challenges.gov for its competitions. Stay tuned for more information on this at http://pscr.gov
There were many more engaging panels, including a discussion on identity management with FirstNet Public Safety Advisory Committee Chair Harlin McEwen, as well as panels on audio quality, location based-information and services, in-building coverage measurements, and cybersecurity.
It is an exciting time for the worldwide efforts to advance public safety broadband communications in the U.S. and abroad. I’m honored to be a part of this initiative for the public safety community and look forward to next year’s conference.
Thanks,
-Jeff
