Fond du Lac County Emergency Management officials continue
to encourage residents to sign up for Smart 9-1-1. The new technology was
introduced in April, and Fond du Lac County is currently the only county in the
state offering the service. County Communications and Emergency Management
Director Bobbi Hicken explains that with Smart 9-1-1 “you are able to put in
personal information about yourself that is tied to your phone number.”
I haven’t commented much in the past few months on Verizon’s efforts to maintain their presence in the public safety market and to compete with FirstNet. Much of what they have had to say is not much more than “me too” statements. As FirstNet grows and innovates, we hear a lot from Verizon about “I can do that” and “we’re the same” or as I like to say “me too”. Well as we know, they aren’t the same and they aren’t doing everything FirstNet can do.
Just to cover a couple of the basics, Verizon is a commercial network driven by stockholders and stock price. FirstNet as we all know is owned by public safety and governed by an independent board of directors, which includes first responders, and is housed under the U.S. Dept of Commerce. It has a robust public safety advisory committee made up of first responders. This is officially called the FirstNet Authority and more information is available on them at www.Firstnet.gov. AT&T is the entity that won the competitive contract to build and operate the network on behalf of the FirstNet Authority using spectrum owned by public safety via the FirstNet Authority. It should also be noted that there is no public documentation indicating that Verizon bid to build FirstNet. I would also like to point out that when you pay your FirstNet bill a portion of that fee goes to the FirstNet Authority for its annual operation. With any other carrier such as Verizon 100% of your payment stays with that carrier to support their stockholders.
Recently, Donny Jackson did an interview (https://urgentcomm.com/2019/08/20/verizon-optimistic-about-position-in-the-public-safety-marketplace-company-exec-says/) with Mike Maiorana, Senior Vice President for Verizon’s public-sector unit, therefore I thought I would take this opportunity to offer some clarification or contrast on some of the points made by Maiorana.
One of the opening statements made was regarding how their “customer segment has trusted” them. I can only imagine that it is not the customer segment whose bandwidth they throttle during major disasters; nor is it the customer segment whose wireless service they shut down; nor is it the 911 network customers they had previously. (All this is clearly documented in my other editorials posted on this site.) As much as they clearly have a segment of customers who trust them, that universe has shrunk. Verizon has a clear history of focusing on the bottom line and abandoning public safety customers when it’s in their financial best interest.
Maiorana goes on to make a number of statements about partnerships with companies like Axon, application development, mission critical push to talk, all of which are nothing more than “me too” statements. None of this would have risen to its current level if FirstNet had not been born. They do this simply to stay competitive and once it doesn’t pencil out in their bottom line it’s gone. I also think there is one significant question that hasn’t been asked or answered. How do you have mission critical push to talk or any mission critical application when public safety doesn’t have guaranteed, always on, top tier priority and preemption on the network? How do you do this without a hardened, dedicated, physically separated dedicated core? I am not a network engineer but my guess is you can’t.
Then the topic turns to deployables – a battle or debate Verizon can’t win. Maiorana is quoted as saying “deployables are not new,” noting that “Verizon has been using them to support public safety for years.” First off, note the word “support” indicating public safety isn’t the primary customer for their deployable. It is simply that they can be used for public safety. Everyone should understand that all carriers have deployables and they are designed with the intent to support network restoration in times of disaster that impact a carrier’s core network. They are not designed with the intent to be solely for public safety. The contrast here is that FirstNet has 72 dedicated public safety deployables available nationwide for FirstNet customers. These are built and designed exclusively for FirstNet public safety customers and are available at no charge to customers for disasters and planned events. Maybe Verizon will make this a “me too” offering for their public safety users.
Okay, so Verizon does have a solution according to Maiorana, “If a government agency wants to control and have in their fleet of assets a deployable, we will sell or lease them one.” Yep, you too can own your own Verizon deployable for a small fee of $100,000.00, $200,000.00 or more.
There is one thing I clearly agree with Maiorana on and it is that this segment is growing and I do believe a company can lose market share and still grow in this new market. The reason why is that we are now seeing more use, development and innovation in the public safety community/market. I also agree competition is good and provides public safety benefits. More than we have ever seen before, companies are stepping up to support public safety because they have found they benefit by doing so. But let’s understand that this has become a reality because of FirstNet, period.
Let me close by saying that I believe Maiorana does a respectful job of trying to move his company forward to benefit public safety. At the end of the day Verizon may believe it is “dedicated” to public safety, but the fact remains FirstNet “is Public Safety”.
Richard Mirgon is a Public Safety consultant focused on FirstNet. He is a Past President of APCO International and has over 35 years of public safety and first responder experience. For more information about the author please go to http://www.next-paradigm.com/about/
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of this company or any company with whom the author may be associated.
Laura Grant dedicated her life helping care for others.
Now
that she’s gone, killed in what friends describe as a “senseless act of
violence,” her coworkers are stepping up to make sure that care
continues for the person who mattered most to Grant — her granddaughter
Zoe.
A GoFundMe
Campaign, launched by women who worked with her at the Mississauga
Ambulance Communications Centre, is gathering funds to support the
three-year-old who Grant was helping raise. More than $9,300 has been
collected so far.
Presque Isle Fire Department is preparing for the change in ambulance
service, which takes effect by 2020. Chief Darrell White says the
department operates four ambulances and serves Washburn and Fort
Fairfield, in addition to Presque Isle. He says while the transition may
require looking at personnel and equipment needs, he’s confident his
department will be able to meet the public’s needs and there’s no
immediate cause for alarm.
“It would depend on how far – how much further we gotta
extend it out – whether we need to look at adding more staff or adding
more ambulances. But with four ambulances and Caribou as a mutual aid
backup, I – I don’t think we need to hit a panic button right off.
Putnam County 911 board members approved a budget Thursday for a new next generation interface system for 911 dispatchers.
The Next Generation 911 system, or NG911, is a nationwide, standards-based, digital emergency communications infrastructure that allows voice and multimedia communications between a 9-1-1 caller and a 911 center, and then to the first-responders in the field, according to 911.gov.
“This is just the interface that dispatchers use to manage the 911 calls as they come in,” said Brandon Smith, assistant Putnam County 911 director.
HALLOWELL – The Maine Public Utilities
Commission has launched a public information campaign to educate Mainers
about calling and texting 911 in an emergency. Two 30-second public
service announcements will began airing statewide in August.
In one PSA, a heart attack emergency is
dramatized with a woman calling 911 on her cell phone. This commercial
reminds viewers to remain calm and provide answers to three critical
questions: What phone number are you calling from? What is the address
of the emergency? Exactly what happened?
Learn about current efforts to continue to protect the 4.9 GHz Band for public safety as well as recent filings, key decisions impacting these efforts, and how you can support PSSA’s initiative to protect the 4.9 GHz band for public safety.
