Today:   FirstNet Announces More than 1,000 Public Safety Agencies are Subscribed, US House Legislation Would Allow Alien Detainees Free Calls to Children, FCC Sprint T-Mobile Merger 

FirstNet Announces that More than 1,000 Public Safety Agencies are Subscribed

FirstNet issued a press release announcing that more than 1,000 public safety agencies across 52 states and territories joined FirstNet. 

FirstNet is designed to support the entire public safety community. Current users include:

• 11 state patrol agencies
• Tribal public safety agencies
• Volunteer firefighters and responders
• Federal agencies
• School districts. They can use the service to communicate and coordinate with public safety during times of crisis.

The nearly 100,000 FirstNet connections are helping transform emergency communications. Since May, first responders have used FirstNet to respond to:

• Active shooter situations
• Flooding events
• Large events like the 2018 Volvo Ocean Race
• Search and recovery missions in remote locations
• Tornadoes
• Wildfires

Washington County (MD) Sheriff Doug Mullendore said "[w]e recently experienced significant flooding. Water rescues, road closures and more needed to be quickly coordinated to keep our responders and our residents safe."  "When disaster hit, we relied on FirstNet to keep us connected.  We even called in a Satellite Cell on Light Truck (SatCOLT), boosting our ability to communicate and coordinate our emergency response beyond the low bandwidth Wi-Fi some of our personnel were using."

US House Legislation Would Allow Alien Detainees Free Calls to Children

Rep. Frank Pallone introduced legislation called the Compassionate Calling and Immigrant Family Reunification Act (2018) which would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate its 2015 recent inmate calling service order which included rate caps for all calls made from prisons and jails, including immigration detention facilities.  The bill also seeks to provide free calls from alien detainees to their children.  Portions of the FCC’s order were overturned by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.  Inteserra Briefing Service subscribers see Briefing 6/14/2017.

FCC Sprint T-Mobile Merger

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that David Lawrence will lead the FCC task force coordinating the FCC’s review of the transaction proposed by T-Mobile US, Inc. and Sprint Corporation. The parties filed their applications with the FCC on June 18, 2018.  Lawrence comes to the FCC from the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where he served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, most recently for AAG Makan Delrahim. Lawrence joined the Front Office of the Antitrust Division in 2016, assisted the management of the Division through the transition between Administrations, and has focused on issues in the telecommunications and transportation sectors.  “I am delighted that David has agreed to lead our review of this proposed merger,” said Chairman Pai. “With his wide range of experience and expertise, David is well-positioned to ensure that we conduct a thorough investigation into whether approval of this transaction would be in the public interest.”

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.