Irma Problems Show Importance of FirstNet, AT&T CEO Says

FirstNet will mean first responders will be able to communicate even in disasters as big as Hurricane Irma, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Irma knocked out about 25 percent of AT&T cellsites in Florida, he said. “Virtually all of that is because of lack of power,” Stephenson said. “We can't get people in to fuel generators, because the roads are not open. So, think about a hardened network, where you don't have this kind of situation occur, even in the most significant disasters like we are seeing with Irma.” AT&T historically hasn't been a big player in public safety communications, he said: “We view this as a nice opportunity for us to take share in terms of the selling services into the municipalities to police forces, the fire stations, the fire departments, and [emergency medical services] around the country.” AT&T and FirstNet expect competition, but competitors must be “interoperable” at all levels with the new network and their devices must be able to use the FirstNet band, he said. Stephenson said 5G will mean faster connections, but latency is just as important. “We’ve got to get the latency out of the entire network,” he said. “Think about autonomous cars, where you have live maps and maps that are being updated in the cloud, you cannot have a centralized cloud infrastructure hundreds of miles away and have autonomous cars.”