I remember hearing about this back when it was being planned but nobody I know talks about it now. The First Responders out here have built their own network with both public and amateur radio links. Talk about a waste of our money - as much as $47 Billion.
From The Atlantic:
The $47 Billion Network That’s Already Obsolete
The prize for the most wasteful post-9/11 initiative arguably should go to FirstNet—a whole new agency set up to provide a telecommunications system exclusively for firefighters, police, and other first responders. They would communicate on bandwidth worth billions of dollars in the commercial market but now reserved by the Federal Communications Commission for FirstNet.
FirstNet is in such disarray that 15 years after the problem it is supposed to solve was identified, it is years from completion—and it may never get completed at all. According to the GAO, estimates of its cost range from $12 billion to $47 billion, even as advances in digital technology seem to have eliminated the need to spend any of it.
And four years later - earlier this year:
The FirstNet RFP, which finally emerged in January, seeks one company to operate the nationwide system. (Verizon, AT&T, and one or more firms that would gather dozens of regional partners into a consortium are the likely players.) The bidders have to offer to pay FirstNet at least $5.6 billion spread over 25 years in return for the bandwidth that FirstNet would make available to them.
The winner (presumably, whichever company bids the most above $5.6 billion, while also demonstrating it can do the job) can then sell the FirstNet network to police and fire departments, hospitals, and other first responders, one by one.
Great - another monopoly and the individual departments have to pay out of their budget to join the network. And, of course, the people overseeing this fustercluck are on top of things as usual:
Certainly, FirstNet is not on Jeh Johnson’s priority list. Asked about FirstNet, the homeland-security secretary said he was “not familiar with what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Just as a reminder, if you had $47 Billion dollars and spent $10,000 every minute, your money would last for well over eight years.
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