New Jersey's FirstNet "JerseyNet"

[902]

902..interesting you bring up PDV and their approach to utilizing the 900 mhz band. Many would think its a reincarnation of Nextels push to talk. Morgan and others would say its not. Will watch to see how that pans out once they get the bandwidth they need in the markets that are interested and who the audience will be that they will cater to. But their technology will be DMR maybe starting out as tier II or perhaps just going to tier III right from the get go. Yet another mode of communications...

I don't think DMR is their ultimate goal. Maybe in terms of short term revenue, as the equipment is readily available and virtually disposable now, but not in the long run. I'm thinking the DMR deployment will help capitalize an eventual LTE network with a competitive infrastructure to FirstNet, but targeted at the secondary market for FN services, the critical infrastructure and land transportation folks. If that is the case, and if it takes off, it would take a big bite out of FN's funding machine.

Remember, O'Brien and friends are masters at taking a spectrum banana (interleaved spectrum) and transmogrifying it into an orange through acquisition, lobbying, regulatory exploits, and good ol' politics (i.e., their ersatz cellular operation... direct connect and SMR emulation was its reason for existence, but that became secondary to attempting to be a competitive cellular voice and data carrier via iDEN). I've got to believe there's a big whiteboard with the strategy all mapped out to end-game, like a game of chess.

Hope I'm not around to see FN stores at strip malls and kiosks in airports. "Offering you the same reliability our First Responders have." (Some might say a "nationalized" cellular company whose invoicing performs a continuous bake sale toward operating its core function.)