AT&T wins the FirstNet contract

[bigsnake49]

AT&T has won a lucrative contract to build and manage a nationwide public safety network for America's police, firefighters, and emergency medical services.

The First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet, was authorized by the federal government in 2012 and operates as an independent authority within the US Department of Commerce. AT&T has just been selected by FirstNet to build the wireless network and said that construction will begin later this year.

"FirstNet will provide 20MHz of high-value, telecommunications spectrum and success-based payments of $6.5 billion over the next five years to support the network buildout," AT&T said in its announcement. FirstNet's spectrum is located in the 700MHz band often used for consumer LTE networks.

The Federal Communications Commission raised $7 billion to fund the network in a spectrum auction that concluded in January 2015. Some of that money came from AT&T itself, as the company led all bidders with $18.2 billion of winning bids.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/att-gets-6-5-billion-to-build-us-wide-public-safety-network/

This will benefit AT&T in suburban and exurban locales where there will be some leftover capacity which they can sell to local utilities and or use for their own benefit.

 

 

[Tengen31]

This is a good thing. I heard about this a while ago. Its band 14 700 mhz

[RAvirani]

Some nice spectrum for them...

[Jones]

I hope AT&T can get this up and running as soon as possible to help first responders and alleviate traffic on commercial carriers when a disaster occurs.

[Tengen31]

I hope AT&T can get this up and running as soon as possible to help first responders and alleviate traffic on commercial carriers when a disaster occurs.

They say it will take up to 5 years.

 

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[TheForce627]

I hope this pushes them to build out even more in rural areas. I'm sure they would have more leverage when putting up towers and antennas as they can say it is for first responders.

[bigsnake49]

I hope this pushes them to build out even more in rural areas. I'm sure they would have more leverage when putting up towers and antennas as they can say it is for first responders.

 

I hope it does since I have both Sprint and AT&T.

[red_dog007]

I hope AT&T can get this up and running as soon as possible to help first responders and alleviate traffic on commercial carriers when a disaster occurs.

They have to do 60% POP coverage in 2years.  I think like 80% in 3years.

 

Going to be a huge boom for AT&T and we should see their network rocking some socks.  Great opportunity to do B30 and B66 deployments at the same time.  As well as cleanup any tower configurations / upgrade equipment.

 

600, Lower 700, Upper 700, 850, PCS, AWS, WCS oh my!