Nevada Joins FirstNet Team

Nevada becomes the 15th state, and third this week, to agree to the state plan for the government-backed national interoperable broadband network being managed by AT&T. The other two sign-ups were Arizona and Kansas.

Both FirstNet and AT&T were trumpeting the addition, which came a day after Verizon said it would offer an alternative core emergency network—states are free to team up with someone other than AT&T so long as the result is interoperable with FirstNet.

“Governor Sandoval’s decision to join FirstNet demonstrates his strong commitment to public safety,” said FirstNet CEO Mike Poth in a statement. “This decision puts 21st century technology over a modern, broadband platform in the hands of the state’s first responders, giving them access to the speed, bandwidth and priority services they need. FirstNet looks forward to continued efforts with public safety to ensure this network is built to meet their unique needs across the state – from remote locales to populous cities.”

"The FirstNet/AT&T public-private partnership is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create a nationwide, dedicated FirstNet core just for public safety that will soon route and encrypt all FirstNet traffic, creating the highly secure environment public safety requires," said AT&T.

(Photo viaFirst Responder Network Authority’s Flickr. Image uploaded on Sept. 14, 2015 and used perCreative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 16x9 aspect ratio.)

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.