Verizon escalates interoperability battle with AT&T, FirstNet

[@TheRealDanny]

Verizon's Andres Irlando is officially putting AT&T and FirstNet on notice: The interoperability fight is not over. Not by a long shot.

"We don't have true interoperability," said Irlando, who is in charge of Verizon's "public sector" business, which includes sales of services to federal, state, public safety and education customers. "It's time for the industry to come together and solve for true interoperability."

Specifically, Irlando is calling for interoperability among Verizon, AT&T, FirstNet and others across a number of services that are specific to public-safety customers. Those services include priority and preemption (which ensures public safety users can access a connection amid network congestion); mutual-aid roaming (where public-safety customers would automatically switch to another nearby network if their primary connection is disabled); application interoperability (wherein features and functions specific to public-safety users work across all networks); and push-to-X interoperability (which includes everything from push to talk services to mission-critical video)

However, AT&T's FirstNet successes appear to have generated some concerns among its competitors.

"AT&T is merely attempting to leverage its FirstNet relationship to alarm potential customers into becoming AT&T subscribers," T-Mobile wrote to the FCC last year. "In fact, AT&T and FirstNet have exaggerated the purported interoperability limitations of other carriers in order to drive subscribers to AT&T's network. AT&T and FirstNet's scare tactics particularly disadvantage potential customers of providers like T-Mobile, which plans to provide innovative public safety offerings."

Others agree.

"The level of priority and preemption between users on FirstNet/AT&T and other networks must be standardized to avoid a situation in which a high priority public safety user on one network is treated as a commercial user on another network," wrote officials from New Mexico's Department of Information Technology in comments to the FCC. "This is particularly important in situations where users from different jurisdictions are responding to a common emergency, such as a wildfire within a remote region of the state."


https://www.lightreading.com/securit...d/d-id/767126?





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[RazMonster]

i had FN for two years but left in Sept for VZW.

VZW priority is sketchy. ive been told that you have to call in and request it when needed and ive also been told its always on so i dont know what to believe but im leaning towards it has to be requested.

FN is robbing people on the cost to have ipads and watches on their accounts. $40 for an ipad and like $25 for a watch or something. i had to leave. you end up paying the same amount

[Jack Hagar]

i had FN for two years but left in Sept for VZW.

VZW priority is sketchy. ive been told that you have to call in and request it when needed and ive also been told its always on so i dont know what to believe but im leaning towards it has to be requested.

Well first responder should be using FirstNet in my opinion because that is what it was designed for. for Verizon to provide first responders they have to use spectrum the rest of us use. They don't have a separate network. If Verizon wanted to be in the first responder business perhaps they should have won the FirstNet auction or bought 10X10 MHz of 600 MHz spectrum and used that.

[DMac704]

Verizon's Andres Irlando is officially putting AT&T and FirstNet on notice: The interoperability fight is not over. Not by a long shot.

"We don't have true interoperability," said Irlando, who is in charge of Verizon's "public sector" business, which includes sales of services to federal, state, public safety and education customers. "It's time for the industry to come together and solve for true interoperability."

Specifically, Irlando is calling for interoperability among Verizon, AT&T, FirstNet and others across a number of services that are specific to public-safety customers. Those services include priority and preemption (which ensures public safety users can access a connection amid network congestion); mutual-aid roaming (where public-safety customers would automatically switch to another nearby network if their primary connection is disabled); application interoperability (wherein features and functions specific to public-safety users work across all networks); and push-to-X interoperability (which includes everything from push to talk services to mission-critical video)

However, AT&T's FirstNet successes appear to have generated some concerns among its competitors.

"AT&T is merely attempting to leverage its FirstNet relationship to alarm potential customers into becoming AT&T subscribers," T-Mobile wrote to the FCC last year. "In fact, AT&T and FirstNet have exaggerated the purported interoperability limitations of other carriers in order to drive subscribers to AT&T's network. AT&T and FirstNet's scare tactics particularly disadvantage potential customers of providers like T-Mobile, which plans to provide innovative public safety offerings."

Others agree.

"The level of priority and preemption between users on FirstNet/AT&T and other networks must be standardized to avoid a situation in which a high priority public safety user on one network is treated as a commercial user on another network," wrote officials from New Mexico's Department of Information Technology in comments to the FCC. "This is particularly important in situations where users from different jurisdictions are responding to a common emergency, such as a wildfire within a remote region of the state."


https://www.lightreading.com/securit...d/d-id/767126?





Sent from my iPhone using HoFo

Verizon is just grasping at straws because they're losing business. If they want to compete, solve some of the pain points and maybe they can win back some of those customers.

[CellGeek]

Verizon is just grasping at straws because they're losing business. If they want to compete, solve some of the pain points and maybe they can win back some of those customers.

What specific pain points are you referring to?

[DMac704]

What specific pain points are you referring to?

Slow data, lack of a separate public safety core, lack of “always on” preemption, priced much higher than competitors, security concerns, etc. All were mentioned when Verizon’s appeal was rejected over AT&T’s DOJ contract win.

[hwertz]

for Verizon to provide first responders they have to use spectrum the rest of us use. They don't have a separate network.

If priority access works the way it's supposed to, this should be irrelevant, the first responders will get priority access so they should get reasonable speeds even if the network in an area is hopelessly congested for everyone else.

If Verizon wanted to be in the first responder business perhaps they should have won the FirstNet auction or bought 10X10 MHz of 600 MHz spectrum and used that.

Agreed, I think VZW underestimated the advantage FirstNet gives AT&T (the 10mhz spectrum's honestly no big deal, but effectively having the official first responder network is a big advantage.) I think interoperability is a good thing (having priority access outside the FirstNet network's footprint), but this is also sour grapes over VZW not getting FirstNet.

[techguru30]

Verizon Wireless is wasting their time and money trying to acquire first responder wireless accounts at this point, since AT&T won the contract to build out a nationwide network for first responder accounts.

[tb_]

Slow data, lack of a separate public safety core, lack of “always on” preemption, priced much higher than competitors, security concerns, etc. All were mentioned when Verizon’s appeal was rejected over AT&T’s DOJ contract win.

VZW does now have a separate public safety core... but only works on certain devices, and it's not available for IRU devices, and there is no true priority over consumer devices. In my tests, I was still only seeing ~150kbps download speeds in a lot of our area during peak hours, even on "5G Nationwide", while getting 100mbps on FirstNet LTE.

Verizon is seriously lost when it comes to public safety... I keep bringing concerns of poor performance to our local gov rep, and all they want to do is push additional services like OneTalk and some fleet monitoring suite. Why would I want to spend MORE money with Verizon, when they can't even get their cell network together?