All
122 companies that submitted a response to FirstNet in 2014 had to certify that
they can meet the security requirements. That requirement can be met in many
ways and it does not mean that they all had to have a license with VHC. For
example if ten of the companies plan to form a team for one bid, only one or
two companies might need a VHC license (see the example below). In another example if 10 different companies
form a team with Avaya and/or Microsoft involved they may already have the
license they need.
It
is only my guess that Alcatel, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, and Lockheed might be
potential prime contractor bidders. Avaya has stated on their web site that
they intend to participate and of course Avaya has a license.
My
experience with the FAR’s was some time ago but it is very likely that it is much
the same today. It works like this for a team involving several companies - the
prime contractor is responsible to the Government for ensuring that the team
has the required technology licenses. But only one or two of a multi-company team
may need licenses and the prime may not need one. For example in the case of
Firstnet there would be a need for a company to have a license to implement the
secure domains nationwide while VHC retains the master registry. There could be
another company on the team that will sell all of the user devices and this
company will need a license for the VHC secure software modules. So there could
be many companies involved in the team but only two of them would need the VHC
licenses.
The
last input I saw on the FirstNet web site was the RFP would be released in the
first half of 2015. But there was a report in late fall that the budget for the
RFP and source selection was just approved and I recall it was something well
over $15 million. That is a lot of money for a source selection process and suggests
to me that there is still a lot of work to be done and the RFP release could be later than expected. I have been looking at their web site for a current RFP release date and have not yet found one.