FirstNet adoption tops 3.3 million connections and 20,500 agencies

FirstNet gained 300,000 subscribers during the first quarter, meaning the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) boasts more than 3.3 million connections provided across more than 20,500 agencies, according to NPSBN contractor AT&T.

AT&T CEO John Stankey said during the company’s quarterly conference call that the carrier giant will be able to concentrate fully on its connectivity strategies with the recent $43 billion sale of the WarnerMedia unit to Discovery. In addition to helping the carrier focus its efforts, the deal allowed the company to reduce its considerable debt burden by $40 billion, he said.

“The transition marks a critical step in the repositioning of our business,” Stankey said. “We’re now able to focus intensely on what we believe will be multiyear secular tailwinds in connectivity. We now have the right asset base and financial structure to devote our energy to becoming America’s best broadband provider.

“Over a five-year period, we expect a fivefold data increase on our networks, and we plan to capitalize on the growing desire from consumers and businesses for ubiquitous access to best-in-class connectivity solutions. The results we achieved in the past seven quarters—all while undergoing a significant repositioning of our business—give me confidence that we can accomplish this goal.”

Those results included 691,000 postpaid phone net adds—the company’s highest first-quarter total in a decade, according to Stankey—with more than 40% of those attributable to the FirstNet growth of about 300,000 connections during the first three months of the year.

Overall, FirstNet was serving more than 20,500 public safety agencies by providing 3.3 million connections as of the end of March, according to AT&T. During the past year, FirstNet has gained 1.1 million connection across 4,500 public-safety agencies, based on the figures provided by AT&T for the first quarter of 2021.

When the FirstNet Authority was established in 2012, many public-safety analysts indicated that FirstNet’s potential addressable market would be about 3 million—the estimated total of police, fire and EMS personnel across the U.S. at the time. FirstNet has expanded the addressable market by also providing prioritized wireless broadband service to “extended primary” public-safety entities—for example, some government, utility, transportation and healthcare users—but few industry pundits expected 3.3 million connections a year before the initial Band 14 buildout is scheduled to be complete.

AT&T officials repeatedly have declared that FirstNet is the market leader among wireless broadband providers for the U.S. law-enforcement sector. However, Verizon claims it is the market leader for the broader public-safety sector, with Verizon Frontline official stating during IWCE 2022 last month that its network provides more than 30,000 public-safety agencies with more than 4.5 million connections. If these numbers provided by the carriers are accurate, AT&T has narrowed significantly the public-safety-broadband-subscriber gap with Verizon during the five years since being awarded the FirstNet contract in March 2017.

AT&T is contracted to complete the initial five-year buildout of the FirstNet system on 700 MHz Band 14 spectrum—the nationwide airwaves licensed to the FirstNet Authority—by the end of March 2023. Under the contract, AT&T was supposed to be 95% complete at the end of March this year, but the carrier already announced that it had passed that threshold in September 2021.

AT&T provided no updates about the progress of the Band 14 buildout for FirstNet during the quarterly call yesterday.