AT&T was selected by the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) www.firstnet.gov to build and operate FirstNet. Since that time, AT&T has increased coverage, boosted capacity and developed new capabilities for first responders rural, urban, and tribal communities.
Today, the public safety community on FirstNet has access to the nation’s largest coverage footprint, reaching more than 2.81 million square miles across the country with public safety agencies and organizations in thousands of communities across the country
FirstNet deals with increasingly complex emergencies which sometimes utilize technology to help the responders. Some of the tools that emergency managers rely on include:
- High volume data streaming between Emergency Operations Center and the field
- Ability to monitor network status in nearly real time, including alerts, network priority features for non-public safety partners with the need to collaborate with first responders
- A catalog of secure public safety and emergency management apps
- Integration with land mobile radio networks
- A communications platform for local mutual aid and EMAC missions
FirstNet in providing medical services is able to transmit images in real time from new diagnostic tools such as:
- Ultrasound and CT
- Exchange real time audio/video feeds with hospitals and physicians while on the scene and during transport
- Tools to send sensitive patient data securely
- Patient tracking and bed management software for real time monitoring.
FirstNet’s Innovation and Test Lab located at FirstNet’s headquarters in Boulder Colorado, is a state-of-the-art lab where FirstNet tests public safety functionality and features that are unique to the FirstNet network.
The Lab offers technology validation by demonstrating how emerging technologies, devices and apps behave in a public safety broadband environment, to ensure that anything that runs on the FirstNet network is public safety focused and ready for first responders to use.
The lab is involved in collaboration and knowledge sharing. In addition to the public private partnership with AT&T, the Lab also collaborates and shares knowledge with NIST, in their Public Safety Communication Research Lab also located in Boulder.
In addition the Lab provides for learning and training opportunities. The Lab will be the technical foundation for a future experience program for hands-on public safety training, demonstration, and user evaluation of FirstNet network technologies, devices, and applications.