Although the nationwide build of a dedicated LTE network for first responders has faced numerous delays, federal officials are looking to give the First Responder Network Authority a shot in the arm by way of a new grant program offering up $30 million to speed the development of underlying technologies.
According to the grant announcement, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Public Safety Communications Research Division hopes to “accelerate research, development, production and testing activities,” related to six areas of public safety communications technology. Those include mission critical voice; location-based services; public safety analytics; communication demand modeling; research and prototyping platforms; and resilient systems.
The $30 million is the first grant related to a $300 million allocation NIST received from the Federal Communications Commission; the FCC raised the money during past spectrum auctions.
In an interview with FirstNet CTO Jeff Bratcher, Dereck Orr, director of the PSCR, said, “Now because of the legislation that provided us with funding for research and development – along with the funds provided for FirstNet – we also have the capability to fund outside organizations to really push innovation in the core technologies that are going to make broadband a transformative technology for public safety.”
“The idea behind this is that we want to help public safety envision what the future looks like for them,” Orr continued. “Not two years or three years from now – but what does 10 years or 15 years look like for you? For example, what does it look like for you to really be able to have the type of location based services that you would have if you could have it any way you want? We want to pull that future vision forward in the timeline by thoughtfully applying these research funds to push innovation in industry, academia, federal labs and labs across the country to quickly innovate around core areas so that public safety can take advantage of these technologies much sooner than they would otherwise.”
FirstNet officials released a request for proposal for the estimated $6.5 billion network last January, giving vendors until last April to respond. The deadline was extended twice and eventually ended on May 31. The idea was to award a contract on Nov. 1, but at that time, CEO Mike Poth wrote on the organization’s blog that FirstNet had “made significant progress in the evaluation process and are moving closer to a contract award,” but hasn’t selected a vendor.
A December report from IWCE’s Urgent Communications suggested AT&T as the leading bidder, which potentially prompted competitor Rivada Networks to file a protest to the selection process “over our exclusion from the competitive range,” a Rivada spokesman said at the time.
FirstNet, which was established in 2012, is an independent authority within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration created to provide emergency responders with a nationwide, high-speed, broadband network dedicated to public safety.
The application process is open to “institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, for-profit organization, state and local governments, Indian tribes, hospitals, foreign public entities and foreign governments,” according to NIST. Applications are due Feb. 28.
