Management Alert: February 2024 FirstNet Authority’s Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network Outage Raised a Significant Risk to the Readiness of First Responders Across the Country

In response to the terror attacks of 9/11, the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority) was established in 2012 as an independent authority within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to oversee a national communications network dedicated to emergency responders and public safety. In March 2017, FirstNet Authority signed a 25-year contract with AT&T for the construction and operation of the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). The contract requires the NPSBN (commonly known as FirstNet) to be a resilient, secure, and highly reliable broadband service with availability 99.99 percent of the time. On February 22, 2024, AT&T customers, including FirstNet customers, experienced a nationwide outage of services. According to FirstNet Authority, the NPSBN was affected by the outage for about 3 hours. We met with 10 public safety agencies from fire, police, and emergency medical services disciplines to determine the impact of the outage. Although impacts to public safety agencies across the country varied, 9 of 10 agencies we spoke with were not contacted by AT&T or FirstNet Authority when the outage occurred. We also found that the impacted agencies had to rely on their own contingency plans to maintain communication during the approximately 3-hour NPSBN outage. Notification of an outage and transparency regarding network performance are essential to maintaining confidence in the NPSBN within the public safety community. Without a reliable communication network during the outage, the safety of our nation’s first responders was jeopardized and their ability to perform their critical mission was compromised. We proposed two actions for change to NTIA and FirstNet Authority to address the concerns presented in this management alert.