AT&T’s Chris Sambar and FirstNet’s Mike Poth. Photos by Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers.
Towers, existing and new, are integral to AT&T’s network buildout for the FirstNet nationwide mobile broadband public safety network for first responders. That’s what officials for FirstNet and AT&T emphasized to lawmakers during a progress hearing Thursday of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet.
AT&T SVP Chris Sambar assured lawmakers the carrier has a team devoted exclusively to the FirstNet buildout, is working to use its existing infrastructure where it can and is building new infrastructure where needed, to extend coverage to rural areas. “We’re embarking on an aggressive build-out in rural areas, areas where there is no Radio Access Network.”
AT&T is adding 72 new custom designed trucks to its fleet that provide connectivity in emergencies. The carrier uses “deployables” which are mobile cell towers. “Where a natural disaster has knocked down a tower, we can drive there and pop up an antenna and provide communications,” said Sambar. The carrier is adding capacity to its network “on a tower by tower basis,” he continued.
Asked how the carrier will handle cybersecurity of FirstNet, Sambar said FirstNet data won’t touch data on AT&T’s commercial network and it’s building a separate data center for the first responder data traffic. First responders will have access to FirstNet in an encrypted way, even for their personal devices.
Asked why FirstNet chose AT&T to partner with, FirstNet CEO Mike Poth said the carrier has the size and resources to handle the buildout and operate the network for the life of the 25-year contract. “We have a sustainable model” and FirstNet “will not go back to Congress to ask for more funds,” he said.
July 21, 2017
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