FirstNet Authority board approves $684 million budget for FY 2025

FirstNet Authority board members on Monday unanimously approved a $684 million budget for fiscal year 2025, marking the organization’s earliest annual budget approval and the largest annual total earmarked for investments and enhancements to the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN).

Of the $684 million total budget for the FirstNet Authority’s upcoming fiscal year, $100.2 million is allocated for the organization’s operations, and another $50.1 million (50% of the operating budget) will be held in reserve. The rest of the money—a whopping $534 million—is slated to fund network enhancements to FirstNet, including supporting the transition to 5G technology and efforts to expand the NPSBN’s coverage.

Historically, the FirstNet Authority board has approved the organization’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year in August. Monday’s budget approval marked a change, in terms of both the timing and the process followed to create the budget, according to FirstNet Executive Director and CEO Joe Wassel.

“I am excited that the budget will be completed—for the first time—this early in the year,” Wassel said during the board meeting, which was webcast. “It’s our first try at zero-based budgeting, which went very well, and it’s tied to our priorities.”

One of those priorities involves enhancing the NPSBN, in terms of transitioning the network from 4G to 5G and “to get coverage, coverage and more coverage” provided to FirstNet users—ideas cited in the FirstNet Authority board’s commitment to spend $8.2 billion during the next 10 years to achieve these goals, Wassel said.

“Thank you, board, for the approval of this budget,” Wassel said. “I think the FY 2025 budget is a thoughtful investment in our people and in our culture at the FirstNet Authority. It’s also a major investment in public-safety, including over $500 million for the continued coverage enhancement and network evolution.”

FirstNet Authority board Chair Richard Carrizzo echoed this sentiment.

“The FirstNet Authority is focused on evolving and enhancing FirstNet, so it meets the needs of public safety now and in the future,” Carrizzo said in a prepared statement. “This budget will enable our team to continue to engage with and advocate for the nation’s public safety community and advance communications for first responders nationwide.”

FirstNet board member Sylvia Moir said the primary focus of the upcoming budget would meet the top priority cited by public-safety personnel responding to FirstNet Authority engagements about the NPSBN.

“Macro coverage remains the primary stakeholder ask, followed closely in the second quarter, followed closely by an increased focus and interest on network availability,” Moir said during the board meeting. “Public safety continues to demand high-speed data connectivity to deliver real-time situational-awareness data to first responders, as well as suggest additional functionalities to existing solutions to further enhance their overall user experience and usability for various operational scenarios.

“We will, of course, continue our engagements with public safety and are committed to driving their unique communications needs into the FirstNet network.”

Wassel provided a brief update on the FirstNet Authority’s actions taken in response the signific Feb. 22 outage suffered by NPSBN contractor AT&T that left some FirstNet subscribers without service for more than two hours.

“We did have an outage back in February of this year. We immediately stood up a task force,” Wassel said. “That task force has come up with recommendations that have been briefed to the [FirstNet Authority] board, it’s been briefed to NTIA and most recently briefed to the FCC.

“So we move on—stronger after [a difficult incident].”

In addition, Wassel said that FirstNet Authority officials “are setting the table” for the organization to be reauthorized. Established in 2012, the FirstNet Authority currently is authorized by Congress through February 2027.

“Although we’re dependent on Congress’s schedule, we’re doing all we can to be prepared for reauthorization,” Wassel said during the board meeting.