By Rich Reed, FirstNet Director of State Plans

I recently had the chance to visit with Delaware state and public safety officials during a meeting of the State Interoperability Executive Committee (SIEC) Broadband Working Group. Delaware may be second smallest state in the U.S. with only three counties, but it is one of the most densely populated states in the country and has more than 7,000 state and non-state agencies that require interoperable and operable communications for public safety purposes.

The Delaware SIEC is an important governance body that provides policy direction and promotes efficient and effective use of statewide resources for public safety communications. One of the SIEC’s goals is to review priorities for statewide interoperability needs and assist in the development of projects, plans, policies, standards, priorities, and guidelines.

During my presentation to the SIEC’s Broadband Working Group, I provided an overview of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology and discussed the relationship between LTE and Land Mobile Radio (LMR). I explained how FirstNet would look to leverage off the shelf technologies and existing industry standards to create efficiencies for the nationwide public safety broadband network and to make sure the network supports security, priority, and preemption.

I also pointed to the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) document defining mission critical voice and talked about how these requirements are providing an initial source of information for FirstNet research team in Boulder, CO.

Members of the broadband working group had a number of questions about our technical approach and our proposed design timeline for the network. The group stressed a desire to understand the design of the FirstNet proposed Radio Access Network (RAN) as it will be outlined in the state plan, as well as the need for speedy consultation and state plan development.

All of these are important considerations as we move forward on key next steps leading up to the design of the state plan. I walked through the key phases of the initial consultation process and described how FirstNet would continue to work with the state Single Point of Contract (SPOC) Mark Grubb to better understand the potential users, coverage goals, and capacity requirements, among other things, to inform the network design in the state plan.

Thanks to Mark and the SIEC for giving FirstNet the opportunity to participate in the Broadband Working Group Meeting. We look forward to working with Delaware to develop a state plan that considers all of Delaware’s public safety communications needs.

-Rich