By TJ Kennedy, Acting General Manager

This week we held our fourth and final quarterly webinar of the year for the state Single Points of Contact (SPOC). Like the previous three webinars, it was a productive dialogue among FirstNet leadership and state and territorial representatives on a number of pressing topics – including the Request for Information (RFI) with draft statement of objectives (SOO) and the Public Notice and Comment that the Board approved last month.

The webinar was the latest in our ongoing efforts to enhance stakeholders’ understanding about those items. The FirstNet team and I discussed the state consultation process and how that effort is being informed by the RFI and will be incorporated into the Requests for Proposals (RFPs) process. To see more about these and other discussion topics, we have posted the presentation from Wednesday’s webinar at: http://www.firstnet.gov/sites/default/files/oct-spoc-webinar.pdf

During the question and answer portion of the webinar, we received inquiries about the proposed definition of “rural” in the public notice. We explained that the definition in the public notice was our preliminary interpretation of the term and that we will be using the input received from the comment process to inform our use of the definition going forward.

FirstNet General Counsel Stuart Kupinsky encouraged the states and their representatives on the webinar to weigh in on the rural definition during the comment period. Stuart said that given FirstNet’s rural build-out milestones, it was critical that we understand how the definition impacts the states and territories as we work toward a solution.

Following our discussion about the RFI and Public Notice, Dave Buchanan, FirstNet Director of State Consultation, delivered an update on the state consultation processes. Dave highlighted key lessons learned to date and next steps, including the upcoming consultation meetings in Oregon, Washington, and Montana later this month.

Dave then introduced Jackie Mines, Director of Emergency Communication Networks for the State of Minnesota, who summarized the main topics and key learnings from the initial consultation meeting held last week in her state. Both Jackie and Dave agreed that while the Minnesota meeting was a success, they wish they had more time to discuss coverage issues and reserved more time for questions and answers at the end. Jackie’s feedback was helpful as the FirstNet user advocacy team continues to refine the consultation process based on recommendations and feedback from the states.

Next, Jeremy Zollo, Director of State and Local Outreach, discussed recent and future updates to the outreach toolkit – including a fact sheet on Tribal Nations that is under development. FirstNet will continue to refine current tools and develop new resources to assist the SPOCs with their outreach and awareness efforts on the public safety broadband network. They are posted on the resources page of our web site at: http://firstnet.gov/resources.

The FirstNet user advocacy team and I would like to thank the states and territories that participated on Wednesday’s SPOC webinar. We would also like to thank Jackie Mines for providing an overview of the Minnesota consultation meeting. We look forward to scheduling more webinars for the states and territories in the coming year.

Thanks
-TJ