AT&T to build US emergency wireless network

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO

AT&T was awarded a $6.5 billion contract Thursday by the federal government to build a nationwide wireless communications network for emergency workers.

The project is aimed at allowing police, fire and medical personnel to easily communicate during emergencies and was initially proposed in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

More than 15 years later, however, the initiative still struggled to get off the ground. But an order by the administration of President Donald Trump will finally build the network called FirstNet.

“Today is a landmark day for public safety across the Nation and shows the incredible progress we can make through public-private partnerships,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a statement. “FirstNet is a critical infrastructure project that will give our first responders the communications tools they need to keep America safe and secure. This public-private partnership will also spur innovation and create over ten thousand new jobs in this cutting-edge sector.”

During the course of the 25-year contract, AT&T expects the company will spend another $40 billion to expand and maintaining FirstNet.

“We are honored to work with FirstNet to build a network for America’s police, firefighters and EMS [Emergencyt Medical Services] that is second to none,” AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said in an announcement. “This is an unprecedented public-private investment in infrastructure that makes America a leader and public safety a national priority.”

FirstNet aims to solve a communications problem that becomes especially acute in emergencies as first responders use wireless telecommunications services as consumers and businesses. The lines can easily become overwhelmed during a crisis and coordination planning can be delayed by outages.

The plans for FirstNet had been pinned down before Trump took office. The project was authorized by the Commerce Department in 2012, and a Federal Communications Commission auction of wireless spectrum channels in 2015 raised $7 billion for FirstNet.