The $47 Billion U.S. Emergency Response Network That’s Already Obsolete
New York Fire Department Deputy Chief Joseph Curry coordinates response teams at Ground Zero three days after 9/11.
By Steven Brill The Atlantic
August 12, 2016
Topics
Homeland
U.S. Navy, Petty Officer 1st Class Preston Keres
AA Font size + Print
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email this article
FirstNet was envisioned as a way for police and firefighters to communicate with one another in the wake of 9/11. But four years later, it’s still not up and running.
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.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/08/47-billion-us-emergency-response-network-s-already-obsolete/130675/?oref=d-river
