Verizon Appears to be Rivada Partner in Failed FirstNet Bid.

In examining the summary of the FirstNet/Rivada litigation as prepared by RCR Wireless, there appears to be pretty strong proof that Verizon is the silent "carrier" partner of Rivada. Specifically, in the recently made public documents, the court indicated "the first set of deficiencies related to ‘Rivada’s lack of financial stability, capacity, and required funding'” — including the riskiness of Rivada Mercury’s proposal to monetize the excess Band 14 spectrum through a wholesale marketplace, which required robust Band 4 device support in order to be adopted by non-FirstNet customers". Band 4 consists partially of the AWS-1 frequencies acquired from SpectrumCo (cable company consortium) by Verizon in 2011. In other words, we suspect that Rivada intended to monetize the FirstNet spectrum by adding it to Band 4 (AWS-1) capable phones- of which only Verizon (and AT&T who bid separately) would likely have a significant interest in using.    

While many people have suspected that Verizon was working with Rivada, we haven't seen any other evidence of it. Of course, it is possible that another wireless carrier with AWS-1 (T-Mobile) could have been the partner, but we strongly doubt their participation given the substantial cost of building out a nationwide network to meet the coverage objectives of FirstNet. Alternatively, perhaps Rivada was simply hoping for Verizon's participation- but we have heard unsubstantiated rumors otherwise.