Ranking Member Mike Doyle (D-PA) delivered the following opening remarks today at a Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing titled, “Oversight of FirstNet: State Perspectives:"
Thank you, Madam Chairman, for holding this hearing, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us today.
FirstNet and the National Public Safety Broadband Network have come a long way and made great progress in the five years since the program was established. FirstNet has designated its partner in AT&T, states have received their build-out plans, and 25 states and two territories have already opted to accept FirstNet’s plans. By the end of the year, all states will have decided whether to opt in or opt out of the FirstNet plans.
I’m pleased with the progress FirstNet and AT&T have made, and I hope this program continues to perform well as more states opt in and the build-out of FirstNet begins in earnest.
A lot of hay has been made recently about the opt-out process and the costs for states that choose that route. States looking into opting out seem overwhelmed by the potential punitive costs and the risks they take on in building and managing their own network.
Companies seeking to get states to opt out see this as barrier to their entry into this market and a stumbling block to meaningfully engage with states. To my mind, the costs and risks placed onto states for opting out are steep, because building and maintaining these networks is a hard and risky endeavor.
Without access to the tens of billions of dollars necessary to build out a dedicated network of their own, states that opt out need to gamble on a private partner’s ability to leverage private capital, utilize a relatively small amount of shared spectrum, and undertake the build-out of a hardened multibillion dollar communications network. And they need to do all of this in a time frame that is competitive with FirstNet and using technologies and systems that are fully interoperable.
To my mind, the monetary risk’s so great because this is a hard problem - and the likelihood of failure is high. More to the point, the risk to the public at large and first responders is high if a state fails to meet its obligations.
If building this network wasn’t hard, Congress wouldn’t have needed to create FirstNet, first responders wouldn’t have died on 9/11 because of communication failures, and the 9/11 Commission would not have recommended the creation of a national interoperable public safety communications system. Building this network and deploying the service is a serious challenge, and we need serious solutions. States are free to make their own choices, but they need to understand and accept the risks. It’s something I would encourage governors contemplating an opt-out to strongly consider.
I’ve also seen reports of competitors seeking to sign up individual first responders complaining about the requirements of creating interoperable services with FirstNet. I’m a strong believer in the value of competition, but I also believe that if other providers want to offer services to first responders they need to be fully interoperable.
Lower-cost services and devices can’t fix the problems first responders face if they are not interoperable. We are still seeing this issue today in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and wild fire affected areas on the West Coast.
Americans are lucky and grateful that so many people volunteer to help when disaster strikes and first responders come from far and wide to help. What we need to do is ensure that they have access to the best available interoperable technologies. If a competitor can provide that, great. If they can’t and they are putting equipment in people’s hands that isn’t interoperable, that is liable to create a problem rather than solve one.
I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses and the discussion here today.
