The Internet for Heroes is Bulletproof

Last week, I talked about the unusual nature of videophones.

They have always been an emblem of futurism… of a bright, shiny future with flying cars and mood organs.

Yet now that video chat is actually available, nobody really uses it.

All those sci-fi novels and movies got it pretty wrong. Video isn’t ideal for live communication. It’s being consumed in much larger quantities asynchronously.

In other words, people consume video when they have time — and they do it A LOT.

How much video are people watching?

According to Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), 79% of all Internet traffic last year was video. With an average of 62 exabytes per month, that means approximately 49 exabytes per month was video. A single exabyte is a million gigabytes, and streaming videos are measured in the much smaller per-second megabit increment. Trying to figure out how much video is streaming right now can make your head spin.

Cisco estimates it will be something like a million minutes of video streaming every second by 2018.

Video is absolutely crushing the web, and with people consuming video on their phones, the mobile data networks are overtaxed even on the slowest days.

Now think about how bad traffic gets when you increase the number of people on their phones. It gets very hard to do anything. As everyone starts to share a greater amount of sensor data (video, location, biometric, etc.), the traffic just keeps getting worse.

If there were an emergency, it would become very difficult to get important information out. This is why first responders across the country are building their own wireless networks that the public can’t use.

FirstNet

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Jobs Creation Act of 2012 created something called the First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet. It is an independent authority within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) tasked with building a national high-speed broadband network exclusively for public safety purposes.

Remember the communications breakdown during 9/11? So many people were simultaneously trying to communicate that the networks couldn’t take it.

Worst of all, firemen and police couldn’t communicate with each other since their radio networks weren’t interoperable, and citizens frantically attempting to contact their loved ones used up all the available cellular channels.

In a crisis when ready communication was massively important, the weakness of both public and private channels was exposed. If first responders had their own data network, interoperability and traffic wouldn’t have been an issue.

And that was 15 years ago, before the smartphone data revolution and the cop cam craze.

The Act passed in 2012 allotted $7 billion in funds for the deployment of this network and $135 million for a new state and local implementation grant program. In its first year of operations, it generated no revenue but only spent $16 million.

The very first place to carry out the deployment was Harris County, Texas, and it was doing so even before the necessary 700MHz wireless spectrum could be leased from FirstNet. It built the network under a special exception from the FCC two years ago with equipment from Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI).

In 2014, the network received its FirstNet lease approval.

The county took up the FirstNet mantle because its residents knew what it was like to lose communication capabilities during an emergency. The same way 9/11 overran communications networks, Harris County’s telecom networks were thwarted by Hurricanes Rita and Ike in 2005 and 2008.

It has proven to be an example for other municipalities looking to build their own public safety networks. The state of California hopes to have its network built by 2016, but NTIA’s management of FirstNet has some doubters shrugging their shoulders.

Now, three years into its existence, FirstNet is still drafting its request for proposals (RFP).

But building a nationwide wireless network is an extremely difficult undertaking, after all. We have to remember that our current national wireless carriers didn’t even build their nationwide networks. They are the result of years of market consolidation.

For example, Verizon Wireless’ network is made up of assets formerly belonging to Bell Atlantic Mobile, AirTouch Paging, GTE Wireless, Alltel Wireless, Cybertrust, and West Virginia Wireless, to name just a few.

FirstNet is being built from scratch in 55 states and territories. It’s a feat no one has tried before.

FirstNet is still taking in feedback from stakeholders, and we’re at the point where we’re still waiting for the RFP to be drafted.

“We have been laser-focused on finalizing our approach to the request for proposals process that will form the basis of our nationwide network deployment,” FirstNet Chair Sue Swenson said. “Consultation on the complex issues… combined with upcoming opportunities to receive feedback on the request for proposals itself and our ongoing state and local consultations nationwide, create fundamental building blocks for our approach.”

As you’d expect, this is taking a lot of time, and it’s creeping ever closer to the next presidential election.

Fortunately, this issue is resistant to partisanship.

Even if Congress and a new president push back on initiatives taken during the Obama administration, this one has legs of steel.

America absolutely worships firemen and paramedics and wouldn’t deny them the ability to communicate in times of crisis.

Before the RFP comes, you can snatch up wireless infrastructure vendors on the cheap.

Good Investing,

Tim Conneally

 @TimConneally on Twitter

For the last seven years, Tim Conneally has covered the world of mobile and wireless technology, enterprise software, network hardware, and next generation consumer technology. Tim has previously written for long-running software news outlet Betanews and for financial media powerhouse Forbes.