everything is new. there were things we got at the beginning two years ago that we have changed as a result of what we have learned and i imagine i imagine we will continue that as we go along. again, it is a very high priority and we will keep you posted. >> mr. andrews, i think it is essential to harden against cyber security because other than your every day natural disaster but when it is not a natural disaster whatever is attacking us is going to be attacking us with cyber simultaneously. what are you going to do? >> sen., cyber security is a a high priority for the department. we recognize it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed as part of the firstnet buildout. not only are we working to make sure they have the support they need but our cio is involved our team is involved and we are working

hand-in-hand with firstnet to make sure they have the resources not just from the department but from across the government, the best expertise available including a number of experts who have been involved. >> i have met and you are going to need to work with them. you're going to your going to need to work with some of our intelligence agencies because the technology is so rapidly changing in these areas of the kind of sophisticated attacks that can occur and if we are talking about a terrorist attack you all are going to have to be able to communicate on your network. of course, that is going to be one of the 1st things that the bad guys are going to try to deny our ability

to communicate in command. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> i want to i want to thank the chairman and ranking member and all of you. i appreciate obviously why we need this. we have all had differences in our state. a number of years ago we had an incident that prompted a discussion. we had a horrible madmen have basically murder the judge, troopers there were trying to subdue him murdered a local newspaper person and the radios did not talk to each other. that works to the advantage of the perpetrator and allowing to use that situation to cause more deaths. this is a real issue. as i think about our state i no that the consultation in new hampshire will be

june 9, i have been told. you have said, ms. susan swenson that you are going to get the feedback from the state and particularly as i think about the chairman's question two thirds of my state would technically be really rural areas where we have challenges on how we build a network that people can talk to each other. and in that process where you take new hampshire's feedback and every other states feedback and then you put together the rfp for the end of the year, will year will the states have a feedback loop? you sit down june 9 they tell you what they think you put together an rfp. is there another effort to see what you are working on to make sure their views are reflected? >> thank you for the question because i want to emphasize that consultation is a broad and ongoing

process, not a one-time event. we talk a lot about state consultation, and it is important people understand. our relationship with the states is ongoing. we have conference calls, are, are available by staff, e-mails face-to-face meetings. also i would tell you that as we go through the process of consultation rfp and delivering a plan teach governor for the plan for their state, that will not be a surprise. we want this to be an iterative collaborative process so that when you get that plan you have been so involved in it there are no surprises. that is the mindset we have around the process. it is important that we work together, and we have been somewhat limited on staff but are adding people to make sure we have the right number to be available to you and your team. >> and one of the things we are hearing some feedback

from people on the ground in new hampshire is they are saying what is the benefit? in other words the local agencies that have been working on this issue for years so this is a new issue for law enforcement and 1st responders and they are saying, why should we opt in to firstnet versus perhaps using a private distributor. part of this plan is how we use maximized commercial opportunity given the resources that we have. what would you say to that issue? this worry that we don't know what to expect from the 1st responder community you can understand why that would be a pretty real one. >> would you like me to answer. >> yes, i'm curious what you would say. what do you think about this?

>> i don't think your feedback is different than what we hear which is why we are trying to be with as many of the constituencies as we probably can. i asked if they know a lot firstnet. a lot of people hundreds of thousands of people. i am not surprised about what you are hearing. i we will i we will tell you from a benefit standpoint that we talk to communicate one of the things is the real coverage which is a critical differentiator. this is a dedicated network. what happens when you have an incident? what is the 1st thing you do? you get on your cell phone. >> i would argue without real coverage you probably could do this quite easily commercially. it is the rural areas that

need help the most. >> commercial is focused on commercial. that is their focus. they have shareholders and earnings releases and things they have to worry about. we do not. the money we get we will reinvest in the network. it is dedicated and has priority. the funding several billion dollars from the last. spectrum that is valuable. it is really good spectrum. and so getting revenue from that will enable us to operate this network. what network. what is important for 1st responders and anyone interested in this is we are talking about a capitalized business model. if you look at the system today they are old 10 15 years old. very old. very difficult for agencies

to get funding to upgrade. the model we have is talking about upgrading that as the technology presents itself. for example, if we start to deploy this network and then move from four to 5g we will deploy 5g. we will give 1st responders the technology we enjoy as consumers. we also will work on the standards around this, but this, but recognizing the network for a particular circumstance in your state and all of the member states , we want to understand what they are and are working to defined a standard so that we can try to harden the network to withstand those incident that you know from our perspective whether perspective that would affect the network. we also are going to have applications. the development community will get excited about the applications that can be made for public safety. this is an organization dedicated to public safety,

not secondary. the priority is about finding customers getting revenue. first nat. first that is very different and is important for people to note that if you decide to let us deploy your network public safety agencies are not obligated to sign up. there is no mandate. think of what that says to us? we have to create a compelling position. that is why we're spending so much time with public safety. understand their needs. we are conscious of that issue and are working hard

to get information out, working with out, working with the associations to get information out to people on the street because it is difficult. we were at the meeting in san diego last saturday. law enforcement was not that familiar with firstnet. i presented. we are working hard to get the message out. >> thank you. we want to make sure our 1st responders are informed. >> thank you. >> thank you. i just want to say thank you for the work that you are doing. tasked with doing something that is unprecedented not just in government but american history that is extraordinarily and absolutely urgently needed. all of us this serve in the united states senate know the urgency of this.

i spent years as a mayor with a mayor with crisis and crisis in crisis and saw that communications whether going into a burning building with no visibility how important are radio is. for us hurricane sandy we saw in the most painful ways how critical communication was. there was a situation an earthquake in new jersey. after surviving the earthquake in california all my communications communications, police department, fire department, it all went down. fortunately we had a plan but that made me realize the challenges. this challenges. this is what you are doing a life or death initiative, making strides that should be celebrated.

my state is ecstatic about the contributions you are making and i kind of like to submit for the record an article about atlantic city about the public safety work you are doing there and how we believe the mobile platforms you are creating can be rolled out and is something for the country that could be a benefit a benefit and model for the nation whether rural or urban areas or suburban areas. i celebrate you in the sense that you are working with bureaucracies not used to dealing with unique public-private partnerships. i respect the professionals sitting with you have done the arduous work of oversight but i want to afford you a couple of opportunities to respond to some of the challenges you

put forward. the 1st is your constructive criticism of having to deal with the challenges that are undermining your progress. it is important that this committee would like to remove barriers. this is one of the more righteous things. what a. what a major crisis happened in this country. if you get this done you will make a difference where thousands of lives could be saved. could you talk for a moment about those options? >> i think we are working with deputy secretary bruce andrews and his staff on improving the process within the department. there is just a lot of people touching a lot of things, and we need to

streamline that. i think it is important that we take -- we have the ability to control our destiny and the ability to have people who are dedicated. this is no pejorative comment. the secondary item for them. a full-time day job. we probably don't get the urgency we feel about things we will obviously follow the rules and regulations but we have an opportunity to move more quickly. i would like to see what we can do about improving that and taking responsibility from commerce. we went through that process with finance organizations initially providing support.

i think we have demonstrated that we can bring in the right resources with the right talent and training put processes and controls in place. >> let me interrupt you. i would love to hear some of the things we could be doing, but i want to end by one comment, one question. the people that have the 1st responders backs should be elevated and i want to give you a chance to respond to the cost of the issue. do you think that is sufficient? >> what is important to understand is the information is built on a lot of assumptions. even mr. goldstein indicated that. a set of assumptions that he

did not even have visibility to. we believe we understand what we need to accomplish in terms of spectrum value. that is why the rfp is such a a critical component because it is the funding mechanism. it is not sufficient to continue to operate and upgrade this network overtime. i believe the financial model is solid but we won't know the answer until we finish the process. it's critical to be able to put together a plan for each of the governors where we can talk but the coverage and what it will cost the 1st responders to subscribe to that. we won't know the facts until completed. >> thank you.

>> i want to thank all of you. i came into the office we were not able to communicate with any natural disasters. could not get the equipment to the right place and time. it is critically important. we are one of the most rural states. i want to thank you. but when we will phase ii of the grants be available? talking and planning.

>> when we will you let them go? >> torn your microphone, sir >> there are actually two rounds of money. the 1st around one has gone out. somewhat dependent somewhat dependent upon figuring out the data needs. the consultation and planning and to allow the states to do the work to fund the work to work with firstnet as part of that 1st round. ..

if you are going to fast-track some of this. >> we expect within the next couple of months to have a second phase of money go up. >> of you want to use this as a trial and error west virginia would be happy to work with you. mr. goldstein the past three years we have successfully hired less than 100 people i am told. an investigation on found

various issues with hiring processes, appears to be more lawyers and lawyers -- layers of bureaucracy and more red tape that annual report which was due february 23 still has not been released because it has to be reviewed. i'm told by 10 different federal agencies before could be even shared with the first responders who it is designed to serve. is all of this new two u.? >> yes sir i'm not aware of that. >> you are wary that the 23rd february 23 has come and gone and the annual report has not been given? >> i'm not sure the question you are asking. to whom is it referred? i them with the gao. >> oh. you are are all over saying it, right? you are the accountability office. >> we have done our first audit which is what i'm here talking about today sir. >> what i'm concerned about what it alarm you all that they might not be able to meet the person

that needs as far as personnel? that's all they have been able to hire. >> we understand -- >> and someone else enter this? >> i can certainly respond to that. first of all the annual report actually has been issued. there was a bit of the time delay but you should have access to that at this point and it does require significant review you're absolutely correct on on that and maybe there's an opportunity. >> but i mean this is what upsets people. >> you are talking to someone from the private sector. no simply doesn't make sense but i'm not an expert on government process so i'm not sure. sioux this is a national emergency and that something god forbid should happen that we help each other? i katrina type thing it was such a cluster. i mean with first met up and running? >> actually that's the beauty of first met. >> i know that but to cut

through 10 different federal agencies tell us where your impediments are. >> the impediments today our personal hiring because it takes us anywhere from nine months to a year to get people on the payroll through the processes through hiring their security clearances of all those kinds of things that can take a significant amount of time to get on the payroll and that's where we are working with the department of commerce and procurement. again i would like to say it's important that we have as much control over our destiny is possible to have people who are dedicated to this and feel a sense of urgency for whom it's not a second job and all the people who work at first net today feel the sense of urgency and want to get things done but it's difficult. >> if i could could work with the ranking member we could look at cutting some of this government regulation to get this up and running much quicker because we are hitting this in every aspect of government. maybe the commerce committee can cut through the sum of this stuff. >> i would be more than happy to

work with west virginia because that is crazy. this stuff is beyond the pale sometimes when it comes to getting launched so let's do that. thank you senator manchin. senator peters. see that thank you mr. chairman thanks to our panelists for your testimony and your hard work on this issue and your insight into it. i want to say certainly i'm concerned about all the issues i have heard from my colleagues in michigan that i'm privileged to represent has a great deal of rural areas as well so i appreciate your reference to making sure we have this network up and running. not only in urban areas but another area that's important to us as the border areas. we are a state that is on some of the most perverse border crossings in the country piggybacked we just recently have been moving forward on building an international bridge between detroit and windsor which will greatly increase trade between our countries and continue to make michigan a hub for the whole country and we abort across as an port huron

and sault ste. marie and as a result of their frequent contacts with canadian officials. as we are dealing with border issues and when it comes to first responders we often have to coordinate with those international entities are in this case the canadian entities and they have different spectrum issues than we have in the united states so chairwoman swanson if you could comment a little bit about how first night is going to ensure that some of our merchants and communications along the borders are going to be facilitated and give me a sense of what sort of discussions you have had with canadian officials in terms of making sure there isn't interference on our side of the border versus their side of the border. >> from a technical perspective one of our projects is not focus on canada but also the southern border because we know border

issues are challenging so we are actually learning quite a bit from our projects and one of those is border issues. again we are focused on mexico and not canada but we have a very good relationship with canada. they have the same standards that the u.s. does so we don't anticipate a lot of difficulty frankly with canada. we are anticipating challenges with mexico which our project is focused on that as one of the key learning conditions. so we have actually from a key learning condition things we have learned from our projects we have actually had 61 things that we have learned and i would like to mention another one in particular that has been extremely valuable that is then fed into the technical team and rfp process and that's our project in los angeles. los angeles is working to try to get some sites up and we have learned the use of existing government infrastructure is quite a bit more challenging than we had originally anticipated.

developing memoranda of understanding, leasing excess capacity is very challenging so it has been extremely helpful through that project. i would have you feel more comforting after the rome and northern border instead of the southern border. i think we will be able to traverse those challenges quite easily. >> the other issue that we face is we have a large coast guard presence as well along the shoreline so just if you could let me know what firstnet is doing to work with some of the military in the coast guard. depending on what the emergency is sometimes the coast guard or the first to respond and to respond in a work with the fire and police and ms personnel as well. >> i think it's an excellent question and just as we have our install the states we have been talking about we have a dedicated personnel staff to focus on our federal partners and there's actually the person said the federal government who is our single point of contact

much like a state has. we are working with a group called the easy ec pc and there's a lot of acronyms in the federal government. emergency communication something something. i'm sorry i don't remember the acronym but it has to do with bringing all the agencies together around emergency communications in previously two of our board members undersecretary from department of homeland security were co-chairs of that committee. we are very engaged in recently met for the federal partners to make sure we can coordinate and make sure they are part of this process. so we are very engage with them. >> wonderful. and the comments ms. bryant mama, you made thinking about a horror story if we ever crisis at the university of michigan football game which we have an awful lot of folks at the stadium. communications could be very difficult. how do you see firstnet handling that situation and the chairwoman as well how come we share that we are not -- we are

going to be able to handle these incredible spikes invite this network is so important and credible -- handling incredible spikes. >> they are somewhat chaotic chaotic and those we experienced the most difficulty with voice communication. as we have to reach outside of our own jurisdictions to gather critical information to help us manage that incident the data side of this is what is really needed and what's important. when we reach out to federal agencies that can provide this with information on other types of information that we would need with law enforcement reaching out for intelligence type information and having the availability through firstnet for the data is critical. again depending on the localities communication system, some are very robust systems out there. some are not so much at this point.

so i look at this as somewhat of a safety net in those times that of your voice does start to feel you and you get overwhelmed you have that backup with firstnet on the data side to be able to exchange critical data. >> just a couple of comments. first of all going back to my comments about a dedicated network first of all that's a lot of capacity with 20 megahertz. as you indicated we sometimes have spikes. we will do the rfp process get someone to actually want to use that excess capacity and it will be using the network and getting revenue for that. the beauty of long-term lte technology it has something called priority and preemption say that their people using the network those folks will come off the network and public safety brady. this is the first time this has been done. having been in telecommunications for longtime

people talk about preemption but it's been done manually. we are doing testing in our labs in boulder right now to validate its more than just vaporware. we have vendor technology in our labs and we are testing it so the good news is that it works. i think it's important to mention because this is a big change for public safety. public safety is used to work and vertical organizations fire law enforcement ems. this is creating a very horizontal ability to communicate. as a result of that we have an advisory group called the public safety advisory council and they are looking at how this new organization is going to help local operations because i think it's going to change the way public safety operates. i think it's good but i think it's going to be different and we are going to enjoy as we see this technology rollout things that we aren't thinking about today much like you say in technology for consumers. i think it's very exciting but it's going to be a big change fo