The back-to-back hurricanes Harvey and Irma, have AT&T describing how the carrier will back-up the nationwide communications network for first responders it’s building — FirstNet. According to AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, when it won the contract to deploy, maintain and operate FirstNet earlier this year, the government said the spectrum bid winner “can use these airwaves for commercial purposes if the FirstNet community is not using them, but you have to have what we call a ruthless preemption capability; meaning; a Hurricane Irma happens, you clear the airwaves and that network is used just for the first responders.”
Speaking to attendees of a Goldman Sachs brokers conference on Tuesday, Stephenson said: “The requirements of the bid are that you build a destination-wide … wireless network and you fill in the white zones, the areas of United States where there is not good coverage,” according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “You fill that in, and you harden these networks,” which he likened to “bunkering in Florida,” and think of “redundant perpetual backup power” in a place like Florida today, he said. Because of Irma, 25 of AT&T’s cell tower sites are not operating there, “virtually” all due to a lack of power, said Stephenson. “We can’t get people into fuel [the] generators, because the roads are not open.”
With a “hardened network … even in the most significant disasters like we are seeing with Irma,” AT&T is required to build a core IP network, “that handles all of this traffic, and this is what allows ruthless preemption,” Stephenson explained.
States and U.S. territories are reviewing FirstNet network build plan proposals now. They have until year-end to decide whether to opt-in or opt-out of FirstNet, explained Stephenson. With 18 states and two territories opting-in so far, those choices are being made at a “very brisk pace,” he said.
September 14, 2017
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