FirstNet has about 5.3 million connections, 27K agencies, according to AT&T

FirstNet provides about 5.3 million connections to approximately 27,000 public-safety agencies subscribing to the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) as of the end of September, according to figures released last week by AT&T, the FirstNet Authority contractor tasked with building and maintaining the system.

After surpassing the 5 million-connections threshold during the second quarter, FirstNet gained 275,000 connections during the third quarter, according to an slide that was part of AT&T’s information that was released in conjunction with the carrier giant’s quarterly conference call with industry analysts.

In a rare occurrence, AT&T executives did not mention FirstNet during the company’s quarterly conference call, but the FirstNet connection gains likely played a notable part in the carrier’s 468,000 net postpaid phone additions during the latest quarter. FirstNet growth also contributed to AT&T’s 7% revenue growth in its Business Wireless unit for three months that ended on Sept. 30.

This spring, AT&T announced that it had completed the initial five-year 700 MHz Band 14 buildout plan for the FirstNet on time and on budget—an action that would make the carrier eligible to receive the last of a potential $6.5 billion from the FirstNet Authority for the initial NPSBN deployment. To date, the FirstNet Authority has acknowledged that it is in the process of reviewing AT&T’s work, but it has not announced whether AT&T has completed all tasks included in the buildout portion of the contract in a satisfactory manner.

Overall, the FirstNet total adoption figures far exceed the initial projections made by industry experts for FirstNet for this point in time, primarily because most did not expect public safety to subscribe to the service in significant numbers until the Band 14 buildout was substantially completed.

But AT&T accelerated this adoption timeline. When it was awarded the FirstNet contract in March 2017, the carrier announced that it would voluntarily provide FirstNet subscribers with priority and preemption services across all of its commercial spectrum bands supporting 4G LTE services, not just the 700 MHz Band 14 airwaves licensed to the FirstNet Authority.

While the approximately 5.3 million FirstNet connection is impressive—indeed, some industry observers estimated whether the public-safety market in 2017 included more than 3 million users—AT&T has shared little detail regarding the figure.

For instance, AT&T has not indicated how many of the connections support “primary” public-safety agencies—police, fire, EMS, 911 and emergency-management entities—and how many support “extended primary” entities, including utility, government, transportation, hospital and other critical-infrastructure entities. There is also no breakdown about how many connections or agencies are associated with state-and-local public-safety entities, as opposed to federal agencies.

AT&T also has not shared details about the type of connections included in its figures, such as how many are full broadband subscriptions and how many are lower-cost plans designed to support Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and other products.

Beyond the FirstNet adoption figures, AT&T announced that there are more than 720 “FirstNet Ready” devices, marking the first time that figure has topped the 700-device threshold. This is significant, because one of the greatest fears about FirstNet prior to the 2017 contract was whether vendors would build devices that support operation on Band 14 spectrum—a concern that has proven to be unwarranted.

In addition, AT&T noted that there are more than 215 public-safety applications in the FirstNet App Catalog.