Episode 83 | Live at 5x5: The Cellular Space Race and What it Means for Public Safety

Narrator: You're listening to Public Safety First, a podcast to help you learn about the First Responder Network Authority and how you can be part of the future of public safety technology.

And now, your host.

Jeff Bratcher: Hi, welcome to the Public Safety First podcast. My name is Jeff Bratcher and I’m the chief network and technology officer at the First Responder Network Authority. The episode you’re about to hear was recorded live at 5x5: The Public Safety Innovation Summit. I had the opportunity to moderate a panel on the cellular space race and the promise of satellite-to-device services. I was joined by Mohammad Baig, lead market development manager at AT&T FirstNet, Chief Justin Kirkland of the Gypsum Fire Protection District in Colorado, and Pat Schwinghammer, director of emerging technologies here at the FirstNet Authority.

We had a great discussion on what this exciting technology can mean for public safety. I hope you enjoy this episode, and thanks for tuning in!

Jeff Bratcher: Welcome, everyone. This is an exciting topic. I'm glad they asked me to moderate this topic with the panelists. My name is Jeff Bratcher. I'm the chief network and technology officer here at the First Responder Network Authority, based in Boulder, Colorado, at our Lab and facility.

I've been around this space for 20 years in public safety. Ten years before that, I was in the cellular industry, deploying networks, 2G networks and 3G worldwide. Some of the things this panel is going to talk about is very exciting to me. So, with that, I'm going to pause and turn it over to our panelists. I'll turn it over to Mohammad to introduce himself.

Mohammad Baig: Good afternoon, all. So, my name is Mohammad Baig. I'm the product manager for satellite-to-device services as part of the initiative here with FirstNet specifically. I've been with the FirstNet program, going back to 2017, since the inception. I bring about 25 plus odd years of experience in the mobility space and excited to be here at 5x5 because it's inspiring to me to do what we do and we have the opportunity to serve public safety in the manner in which we do, right? I think the biggest thing for me is to listen to you all and to understand what it is that you guys have needs that we need to solve for. Excited about what the possibility is here for you all and for us to help you get there.

Justin Kirkland: Good afternoon. I'm Justin Kirkland. I'm the fire chief for the Gypsum Fire Protection District, which covers about 455 square miles of the Rocky Mountain area in Colorado. I've got 30 years in the fire service and about 35 years in the communications industry. I'm here to kind of share our experience and need with this technology that's coming up.

Jeff Bratcher: Thank you, Chief.

Patrick Schwinghammer: I'm Patrick Schwinghammer. I'm in the technology side at FirstNet [Authority]. This technology has come by so quickly that to be able to say that a cell phone's going to talk directly to a satellite is just incredible. And this is one of the ways that we are advancing and having first responders staying on the cutting edge here. So, very proud to be able to share this technology with you.

Jeff Bratcher: Great. Thank you, Mohammad. Thank you Chief. And thank you, Pat, for the panel today. 

On the Authority side, it was last summer, I believe, that AT&T approached us and like, “Hey, we're thinking about this new partnership.” They explained it to me. “Oh, we're going to talk directly to a normal phone from a LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite.” I said, "That's impossible. How are they going to do that?" Right, Mohammad, I challenged you. I actually got to visit this factory. It's in Midland, Texas. It's a fantastic facility. Kudos to the team working on that.

First up is going to be Pat Schwinghammer, I think, talking about the visit out to AST. So, Pat, please take it away.

Patrick Schwinghammer: The visit we had, we tested the AST solution with the FirstNet solution. But it was all done in the lab. We were able to test out all the features and functionality of FirstNet. We look forward to testing the actual link from the satellite while it's in space, down to Earth later on. But it was a very successful trip. One thing is amazing is we're standing around the satellite array. Several cell sites are coming out of that array at the same time. And as the satellite is going overhead, these beams are focused on the Earth at a consistent place in time and space. And so, the actual subscriber unit thinks it's on a terrestrial network. It's really fooling the subscriber unit to thinking that it's not on a satellite. And the test was very successful.

Jeff Bratcher: Thanks, Pat. Next we're going to touch Mohammad on some of the architecture.

Mohammad Baig: Thanks, Jeff. So, wanted to take a couple of minutes to just talk about what satellite-to-device services are and what they're not, right. There are two versions of sort of adjacent offerings, Satellite to device messaging — only SOS and so on. Obviously, does not interact necessarily with the operator core. It's an SOS and messaging only service today. And you know, as many of you have seen in the press, that has been the vehicle through which lives have been saved, right? So, definitely a significant step forward.

So, you've got scenarios out there today such as our own CRDs [Compact Rapid Deployable] and miniCRDs, where you have LEO satellites talking to some sort of quote unquote, "an appliance," right. And that's sort of the appliance you see on the ground in the case of, you know, our miniCRDs and our CRDs, which then talk to any mobile device, typically through Wi-Fi. In the case of our CRDs, you've got a Band 14 radio in that thing, right? You can get to an operator core through that configuration. And that is obviously critical for us, given the way FirstNet is built.

And so, wanted to take a moment to just speak to that a little bit before we get into the solution that is envisioned for the AST-AT&T partnership. That relationship goes back to almost 2018. I think it's a byproduct of our engineering teams and our technical teams really engaging with AST and looking at the revolutionary way that this is being built and deployed. You've got the ability to talk from a low Earth orbit satellite directly to a device. You're talking about delivering messaging, voice, basic location based service and low bandwidth data all through LEO connectivity back to terrestrial infrastructure, which in our case, it's important to connect back to the FirstNet core. We want to make sure quality of service, priority, preemption is available to our public safety responders, just as they are in the terrestrial environment. That was one of the big determining factors of where we wanted to go with AST. There's a relationship there that's been built and strengthened over the years that we that we've come to trust. So, all of that kind of snowballed into where we are today with AST.

Jeff Bratcher: Great. Thank you, Mohammad. Chief Kirkland, why don't you give us some use cases, why this technology is so promising?

Justin Kirkland: Absolutely. So, for the fire service, this solves a lot of problems for us. At least for a department like my size, where we don't have a lot of resources, we cover a large area where, you know, funds restricted, we’re resource restricted. I've only got so many people on a day, so I have to make use of the best technology I can and stretch that as far as I can. We also live in an area that doesn't have a lot of cell coverage. Our LMR [land mobile radio] system is a great system, but even it can't get everywhere. We have areas that we call dark territory where we have to when we're responding into risky situations where we have to tell our comm center that we're going into dark territory, and we'll talk to you in a couple of hours. And when we come out, not always a fun thing.

You know, in one week we had a plane crash in the rural environment. We had two significant ATV [all-terrain vehicle] accidents that took four hours each to extract these patients. One of the swift water rescues we just ran, we thought we were going to one patient. Come to find out, we had three. It took us an hour and a half to get there, and then we also have someone missing still in the river.

We capture all these incidents that happen in the back country, and a lot of them come in off of SOS messages, so people calling us don't even have connectivity. So, they're relying on those SOS things. So, we're sending resources into these areas with not a lot of information. These are the type of things that we have to be able to coordinate our resources where people are and keep people safe.

As we're strategizing where to put people on the rivers to try to have some down river containment, where are our fires? How is our mapping? You know, we just need to be able to coordinate these basic things. And we might have LMR coverage and be able to voice talk, which is great, but there's so many things now that we rely on when it comes to our mapping of where is everyone? What is the perimeter of our fire?

When we're going to some of these rescues in the back country and we're driving, we might get updated coordinates of where they think they are. We're having to stop, pull over, write down these coordinates, then type it into whatever device you might have because we're not connected and it's just wasting time. And then we get on the road again. Oh, now we have another update. Stop, pull over, type out these coordinates. Whereas we've gotten so used to when you're in connectivity, send me a pin.

We don't need a lot of bandwidth but just be able to get some data to us. And here's the pin, here's the update. Maybe give some notes, if there's a picture, great. And just it's a game changer for us to be able to communicate.

Our state is rolling out a new product, which is being sponsored by the state that allows us to communicate. It has its own push-to-talk feature within it. It has location services where you can track resources, we can share data files. And it's meant to be at a state level where we can break off and say, "okay, this incident is getting these resources and it's available," and then as you add resources to that incident, they can check in and automatically have all the data. But if you're not connected, it's not going to work the way we need it to. So, these are another example of these fantastic tools out there. But we've got to fix the connectivity when we're in the back country.

Jeff Bratcher: Great, thank you chief. Pat, does this work and why? What makes it work? Talking directly from a phone to a LEO satellite.

Patrick Schwinghammer: I see it as a combination of the rockets have gotten cheaper to bring up. The satellites have gotten smaller and smarter, allowing these huge satellites to have the signal processing to create pencil beams looking straight down at the land. And that closes what is called a link budget. Can I talk loud enough for you to be able to listen? And vice versa. Given the size and the ability to have these very tight beams, we're able to close the link budget. So, it's almost a trifecta of all these technologies — being able to have small satellites, the CPU [central processing unit] be able to do the signal processing to create these antennas, have made this type of solution possible.

Jeff Bratcher: Great. Thanks, Pat.

Mohammad, my next question is for you. Can you touch on some of the differences in what we're seeing now in some of this SOS capability that was rolled out last year in the commercial space versus what you're envisioning here with AST and some of the trials moving forward? Second part of that question, can you touch on the frequency bands, and what we're supporting, and what's near and dear to FirstNet's heart?

Mohammad Baig: Yeah, so let me start off with the second one first. Clearly, you know, low band spectrum is important, right? For obvious reasons, propagation characteristics and so on, right? The goal and the vision is that we are able to enable low band spectrum, that is AT&T and also Band 14 in the near future to be able to support this sort of a service. Obviously, Band 14 is public safety spectrum, it is FirstNet Authority authorized for use by AT&T. And, certainly that is the goal that we want to achieve is to be able to offer Band 14. The goal, of course, is to mimic the service and the experience that we have in our normal terrestrial network as best we can on the satellite network, to offer solutions to some of the problems that Chief mentioned.

Our goal is, again, to offer that ability to connect at the most basic level, right? If you think about wildfire scenarios and you think about initial attack, and you think about all those various scenarios that you all participate in wildfire scenarios, right? All you basically need is the ability to locate folks and the ability to have a basic level of communication with them. Eventually, when the service matures, we hope to obviously get broadband data to the fire line and get that back into the incident command post. That's a couple of years out. This is innovative technology. We want to sort of crawl, walk, run here, right? So, we want to get to a point we’re able to offer that basic IP connectivity to solve some of the basic use cases that Chief mentioned and then build upon that going forward.

Jeff Bratcher: Great. Thank you, Mohammad. I'll follow up with that as well. So, the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] actually did a rulemaking on supplemental coverage from space because these licenses are licensed for terrestrial use. So, we worked on the Authority side, as the license holder for the Band 14 spectrum across all 56 states and territories, we worked with the FCC as well as they were making that rulemaking, and it was resolved in March. They issued the order where we can use our Band 14 spectrum from space-based satellites. So that was a key element to the crawl, walk, run. We needed to be able to legally transmit from space, since the license was terrestrial initially. We saw the tremendous benefit this would have for our first responders. We have the deployables. You can bring network with you. What can we now do from space with this advanced technology to get them that without bringing it with them?

I'm going to open it up to the audience. I see hands have come up — stand up, say who you're with, and please ask your question.

Robert Simmons: Good afternoon. My name is Robert Simmons. I'm the deputy fire chief with the US Army Garrison Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Alabama. My question relates to the speed of deployment of the technology. And without getting into any proprietary discussions, I wonder if there's any thought applied to leasing space. We know that on the current, you know, 5G, LTE network that AT&T and all the other cellular providers often lease space on other providers’ towers. So, in my head, there's the potential to lease space on a satellite array from a partner company. So, I just wonder if that's anything we've thought about to speed the deployment of the network. Thank you.

Jeff Bratcher: Yeah, thank you sir. Mohammad, do you want to touch on that?

Mohammad Baig: We realize that this is innovative and groundbreaking technology. With it will come lessons, right, that we don't know that we are about to learn. And so, partnerships are important. I think your point is spot on. The ability to make this not only a technical reality, but also a financial reality, is paramount. And to do that, those partnerships are important.

Jeff Bratcher: Yeah. And one thing I would add to that is also the cost of getting the satellites up has come down drastically. And as Mohammad said, crawl, walk, run. What can we do with Band 14 specifically? They have their commercial bands on this as well. And that's what Pat and the team will be working with AT&T going forward.

Other questions?

Charles Laird: My name is Charles Laird. I'm from the North Carolina FirstTech program. I was curious on the panel’s thoughts how HPUE [high-power user equipment] will play into this innovative technology? Thanks.

Jeff Bratcher: Great question. HPUE is high power user equipment. That's a unique benefit on the Band 14 spectrum that the Authority has that AT&T is leveraging for the FirstNet network. It allows us a 1.25W transmit power out of our user equipment. This is not your typical cell phone, these are going to be vehicle modems etc.

Mohammad Baig: The only thing I'll add there is, you know, just recognize where HPUE is most effective. So, if you think about, sort of, a fading environment that you traditionally experience in terrestrial mobility, that lends itself well to HPUE being an effective tool to increase the uplink. And that's the ultimate goal of what HPUE does. It doesn't, sort of, create more coverage. It simply makes coverage that is already there more usable. And so, one of the things that is being investigated is how that applies in the satellite context, right? We need to thoroughly investigate what does HPUE bring in the satellite environment versus the terrestrial, suburban, urban, rural environment. So, that is something that is being considered, and it's certainly a key differentiator for FirstNet and we do want to make it a reality. But again, there are steps to go between now and that.

Jeff Bratcher: Other questions? Go ahead, Chuck.

Chuck Shaughnessy: I'm Chuck Shaughnessy, I'm with the FirstNet Authority. Other than the annoying delay you get when talking on something that's like a satellite, are there any other impacts the latency has on applications like VPN [virtual private network] or other things like that? You guys seen that?

Patrick Schwinghammer: I can handle that. As the satellite is moving across the sky, the effective distance changes, so latency can go and can get larger and smaller. That is being adjusted by the AST solution to have a constant delay. So, it's being addressed that way. So, you have a consistent higher latency. The latency obviously is higher than what it would be for 6G solutions where we're talking about sub-millisecond latency levels. But it would be consistent. And that would have to be considered with any kind of other applications that are used here.

Jeff Bratcher: Mohammad, any follow up?

Mohammad Baig: Yeah, I think the key thing to remind ourselves in regards to that question is some of the things that the Chief mentioned, right? I mean, at the end of the day, as good as our CRDs are and as good as our miniCRDs are, and all the other tools that we have in the toolbox, at the end of the day, they require a setup, they require the ability to deploy. And sometimes we simply don't have that kind of time. Now, with regard to latency, understand that, you know, we're talking about a low Earth orbit situation here. Your terrestrial latency for a traditional 5G service is, you know, sub-60 milliseconds kind of roughly speaking, and then if you were talking about your traditional satellite based miniCRD, CRD, those latencies can be upwards of 70, 80, 100 milliseconds. The goal is that at the end of the day, we will be somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. The goal is to get it so that Chief and his counterparts are able to communicate effectively without having that excessive delay. If you place a call on a miniCRD and a CRD today, you will notice a very, very slight delay. If you weren't paying attention, you wouldn't catch it. But if you're, you know, an engineer like some of the folks in this room are, you will notice that. And the goal is to make sure that as you grab that phone and you go into these white space areas and you pick the phone, use it, and it doesn't feel different. That's the intent.

Jeff Bratcher: Thanks, Mohammad. Sheriff Koutoujian?

Peter Koutoujian: You know, as with our TTR coverage, right? Tribal, territorial and rural, and there are just areas, I'm sure, in your state, Chief, and, and many of the other territories and states that we visited where it's just impractical, if not impossible to get complete coverage of those areas. Is this a solution to covering those? Are we thinking about this only in times of crisis, or are we thinking that this might be an alternative way to provide coverages to those Tribal, territorial, and rural areas that simply don't make practical sense or physical sense, logistical sense, to be able to set up coverage in those areas?

Jeff Bratcher: Great question. Again, it's starting at that crawl phase, those white areas where you're never going to build infrastructure, it's hard to bring stuff in, as Chief mentioned, how can we get the coverage there, but also setting the realistic expectations. You're not going to be streaming high-def video from your phone through the LEO back down. So, understanding those use cases and what the technology can do, we know it's scheduled to grow. We've got all the major wireless carriers in the United States as well as worldwide looking at this type of technology as well, which is good for the ecosystem. So, that's where it's starting at. I'll go to Mohammad first.

Mohammad Baig: Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. Territories, Tribal, rural, clearly a important aspect of the mission that the Authority has laid out for AT&T, right? So, if you think about the deployment and the, sort of, the crawl phase that we're talking about today, much of the white space is indeed tied to a lot of those rural areas, a lot of those Tribal areas. I think we'll be hitting those as we get closer to launch. Territory certainly is important, and is certainly a open discussion right now as to where that will head. So, this is without a doubt, groundbreaking technology. And this is here, now. It’s up to us to figure out how to get this, to make this a financial and technical reality. So, I think we're down that path today. We're up to the challenge. We have the right people in place to help. And obviously the end goal here is to support public safety.

Jeff Bratcher: Chief, anything you would like to add to that? Rural, Tribal lands, territories. I know you’re Colorado mountains, rural areas. What's your perspective on that?

Justin Kirkland: I think it's going to go there. I mean, if you just kind of follow us as a society where we're getting with everything's connected. I mean, we've got small mining towns that had no connectivity whatsoever a couple of years ago. In fact, there was one of our communities, they knew where to go. There was a tree with a sign that said Mountain Bell, because you knew if you stood at that spot, you had a call for help. And now we've got full connectivity into these towns just for everyday communication. So, as technology grows and as a society, we have that expectation. I think it's just a natural thing that that's going that way.

Jeff Bratcher: Great. Pat, anything you'd add? Tribal lands, territories, rural area and impact?

Patrick Schwinghammer: Yeah, I would say as this service rolls out, we'll know where the demand is. And, we can then put the terrestrial cell sites there to complement and offload the satellites as they go through. The approach that we're taking is do no harm to the network. How do we isolate the Band 14 from keeping it from interfering in the urban areas? We want to make sure that this is a service that is complementary throughout the launch, and not that we start interfering with the network as it is today.

Jeff Bratcher: Thanks. So, thank you all for your attendance today. Again, exciting technology ahead. Stay tuned. Thank you all very much. Have a good rest of your day.

Narrator: Thanks for listening today. We're excited to have you join our podcast community. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, and YouTube. You can learn more about the First Responder Network Authority at FirstNet.gov and learn about FirstNet products and services at FirstNet.com.