b'DELIVERING THE FUTUREThe DEA had a lot of people down there, he said. We got many out, but many also remained. We prepared as well as possible, but the damage to communications was unprecedented. I reached out to multiple In law enforcement and public providers to discuss recovery efforts. When I reached AT&T, they were already onsafety in general, there is no the ground there, re-establishing cellular service. I was stunned. such thing as an acceptable level of loss.As he approached retirement, Patterson reached out to peers in law enforcementRob Patterson // Senior Director, AT&T Public Safetyand heard similar stories about AT&T, he said. Such as the time during an active shooter situation when AT&T dispatched a deployable tower and turned a hospital with poor coverage into an operational command center in under two hours. In many of these conversations, the companys work on FirstNet was top of mind. FirstNet went operational ahead of schedule, utilizing AT&Ts existing LTE network footprint. An evolved packet core, also known as a private core, is now being deployed that uses physically separate hardware to effectively separate public safety traffic from commercial traffic. This follows a defense-in-depth approach for security and provides granular control to public safety organizations. The core network will provide strong security via available end-to-end encryption solutions of all communications across the networka first for a mobile network.Superior security is not the only FirstNet differentiator. Just as important is the fundamentally different approach being taken in the national buildout. Thats a critical piece, because FirstNet is being built out over the entire country, in remote rural areas as well as major metropolitan regions. FirstNet is being developed specifically for the public safety field based on their input. Its a total reversal from how the process has worked in the past. 5'