By Howard Buskirk | April 23, 2026

Ed Mortimer, NextNav’s vice president of government affairs, said Wednesday that all indications point toward the current FCC being interested in moving forward on an NPRM that could clear the way for the proposed use of lower 900 MHz spectrum to enable a “terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).

“We’re very excited to work with an FCC” that’s “promoting innovation, promoting technologies to come to the fore,” Mortimer said during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Other speakers said getting better maps remains a significant issue for first responders.

Mortimer noted that GPS has challenges. U.S. adversaries have learned how to “jam and spoof” it, and in any conflict worldwide, “they attack GPS.” GPS signals also don’t work indoors, where they’re needed by first responders, he said. NextNav is already working with carriers and FirstNet to provide “Z-axis” vertical location information on wireless calls to 911, Mortimer added, but that data helps public safety only if it’s accompanied by other accurate location information.

Brooks Shannon, director of emergency communications solutions at geolocation information company Esri, said indoor maps “can have a lot of power” for first responders, helping them understand “where someone is, how to reach them, what infrastructure might be nearby.” Mapping is especially important as administrators look to make schools safer, given the ongoing epidemic of school shootings, he said.

Shannon also argued that Congress needs to move forward on the reauthorization of FirstNet after a bill cleared the House this week. For the technology to work, “you have to have the broadband network first.”

Brian Nardelli, chief of the Brockton Fire Department in Massachusetts, said a seminal event for firefighters on the importance of mapping was the Worcester Cold Storage fire in his state in 1999. Six firefighters were killed, and “there was a huge push to find out how we could figure out where firefighters were in the building,” he said. “That was a big concern.” Authorities sent in other firefighters to find those whose locations were unknown, and some of them were also killed, he noted.

Nardelli said the technology has improved markedly as companies like NextNav and Esri offer new mapping products. But Brockton is an old industrial city with lots of rundown buildings, he said, and in the last five years, three firefighters have fallen through floors and sent out “mayday” calls. If they can’t communicate with us, “we may not know where they are.”

“We don’t want any more firefighters to die, needlessly, because we can’t find them,” Nardelli said. About 100 firefighters in the U.S. still die every year in fires, and that number hasn’t changed over the years, he noted. Technology could make “a big difference.” To be able to use the new communications technology is a “game-changer for the incident commander that’s standing in front of a building.”

Nardelli also discussed the importance of FirstNet. After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, networks were flooded with calls as people near the site checked in with friends and loved ones, he said, so first responders needed their own secure channels to communicate. “I need reliable information at all times to be able to make decisions.” Fire chiefs have “worked very hard” to make sure FirstNet gets reauthorized, he added.

Posted with permission from Communications Daily.