6 things to know about the Rivada Mercury/FirstNet lawsuit

Last November, Rivada Mercury filed a lawsuit over the contract award process for the $6-billion-plus nationwide public safety LTE network being developed under the auspices of the First Responders Network Authority, or FirstNet.

The federal court case has to be resolved before the request for proposal can be awarded. Here are the main points of the dispute, as laid out in court documents.

1. Rivada Mercury is a company formed by Rivada Networks, Fujitsu, Nokia, Harris and Black & Veatch (each with a 20% stake) to bid on the $6.5 billion contract to build a nationwide public safety Band 14 LTE network for FirstNet. Other partners listed on the company’s website include Ericsson and Intel Security. (Rivada Mercury has appointed a number of former Sprint executives to its senior leadership positions, and former Sprint executive Joseph Euteneur serves as co-CEO and CFO with executive chairman and co-CEO Declan Ganley of Rivada Networks.)
2. Rivada Mercury sued to protest the exclusion of its FirstNet bid from the “competitive range” for the FirstNet RFP. Some history on the FirstNet RFP: it was released in January 2016, and the response deadline was initially set for April of last year, then extended twice to give vendors more time, before wrapping up at the end of May 2016. FirstNet had hoped to be able to award the contract by November 2016, and notified at least two bidders – Rivada Mercury and PdvWireless – in mid-October 2016 that they were out of the running based on FirstNet’s evaluation of their bids. On Nov. 21, Rivada Mercury filed a lawsuit in federal court objecting to its bid being dropped from consideration. The RFP cannot be awarded until the case is resolved.
3. Rivada Mercury sued the Department of the Interior (which issued the network RFP on behalf of FirstNet). Rivada claims it was wrongfully excluded from the competitive range for the network project and is arguing that the court should force FirstNet to include its bid in the competitive range and allow Rivada Mercury to fully address the areas of concern or weakness that led FirstNet to exclude it in the first place. Rivada also claimed (in a heavily redacted version of its initial complaint) that “based on industry intelligence,” FirstNet’s competitive range “reduced the field to a single remaining competitor.”
4. In late November, AT&T joined the lawsuit as a defendant-intervenor – a third party who wasn’t involved in the original lawsuit but joins in on one side because it has a stake in the outcome – on the side of the government against Rivada. In its request to join the case, AT&T stated it “is within the competitive range and stands a substantial chance of receiving the award in this procurement,” going on to add: “As an offeror whose proposal was accepted into the competitive range and who is currently seeking to be awarded the contract under this procurement, AT&T has direct and substantial economic interests in this case.”
5. Public safety agencies including the City of Boston and the Bay Area Interoperable Communications Systems Authority have filed amicus briefs in the case, noting they and other local government agencies “are directly impacted by the pending bid protest. Until this case is resolved the award of the contract for the important First Responder Network Authority is on hold.” These agencies have asked the court to consider and decide the case “without any unnecessary delay, so that the important build out of the FirstNet network can proceed.”
6. Most of the documents in the case are sealed or have large amounts of detail redacted, and the recent hearing on the case was not open to the public – in both instances due to the nature of the competitive concerns involved as the case centers around the details of Rivada Mercury’s bid and how FirstNet evaluated that bid. A Department of Justice official confirmed the case is ongoing and declined to comment further. A Rivada Mercury spokesman responded for a request for comment, saying: “The judge has studied the briefs from the parties and conducted oral arguments. We expect the judge will issue her opinion shortly and we remain hopeful and optimistic that the judge will reach a decision that allows Rivada Mercury to continue to compete for this important procurement.” The company told Urgent Communications as of March 3 it expects a decision within “the next couple of weeks.”

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Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a comment from Rivada Mercury.