According to a statement on FirstNet from the PSBTA, “FirstNet faces an uncertain future unless Congress moves to reauthorize it. This decision could determine whether firefighters, police, and emergency medical personnel continue to have the cutting-edge technology and nationwide coverage they rely on.”
“The inability of first responders to communicate during the September 11th attacks led to the creation of FirstNet. Without congressional action, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.”
Charles F. Dowd, former Assistant Chief of the New York City Police Department and First Responders Network Authority (FirstNet) Board of Directors member, spoke with Law Enforcement Today last week on the urgency of Congressional reauthorization of the broadband network and its unique status as a public-private partnership that has been cash-positive and self-sustaining.
Support FirstNet reauthorization! Read the letter Public Safety leaders sent to Congress and sign the PSBTA petition to show your support! https://t.co/z6N63WYWIs#FirstNet #PublicSafety #FirstResponders #Firefighters #EMTs #LawEnforcement #EmergencyResponseCommunications pic.twitter.com/V25cuiBQra
— Public Safety Broadband Technology Association (@PSBTAssoc) April 26, 2025
Dowd explained that FirstNet, in an unusual move for public safety, “committed to a public-private partnership, a way to fund the network in a set. And the reason we did that was that Congress, historically, was always wary of public safety in the sense that we're always looking for money. And so when we went to them and said, hey, we need this radio spectrum to create a public safety broadband network, you know, the 700-band spectrum.”
“Their answer was, you know, we'll give you this spectrum, but we know you guys, right? You'll be back to us for money to build this network within a couple of years, right? So we, again, we committed to a very unique idea, which was a public-private partnership so that it was self-funding. All right, so that we did not have to go back to them and say, ‘Hey, listen, we need another ten billion dollars to build this thing, or we need another twenty billion dollars to build this thing.’ So we committed to this, public safety committed to this as a whole, and it was … a unique leap of faith for us to do that.”
Essentially, Dowd revealed the issue around the reauthorization of FirstNet isn’t a budgetary one, as policy and infrastructure legislation so frequently are, but rather a matter of educating members of Congress on what FirstNet is and why it needs to be reauthorized.
Dowd said that 9/11 revealed the shortcomings of regionally isolated communications systems that couldn’t be integrated. “So public safety, looking at the problem we needed to solve from a nationwide perspective, committed as a whole across the nation, which was historic in and of itself, that had never happened before, we committed to the idea or the concept of a nationwide public safety grade broadband network… We were always the one-off technology, which made our capabilities or our devices, and our networks very expensive or relatively expensive compared to commercial networks. So we committed to following the commercial world in their broadband technology evolution, which has now ultimately ended up in 5G technology.”
He explained, “Those of us in public safety that have lived this for 20 years are very familiar with it and know what the need is, and we believe we know what should happen. What you have now is, what you have now is, is you have, you have a large turnover in Congress, right? And a large turnover in staff in Washington. A lot of them don't know the history of FirstNet, they don't know why this exists, that it was that it was a ground swell up, you know? From the ground up, a state, local, public safety effort. Many of them presume it was a federal effort. It wasn't. It was a state and local effort, a first responder effort. But we needed federal legislation in order to create it.
So the biggest stumbling block in my view for us is education of members of Congress to understand that this thing was necessary, that it has been a tremendous success, and then that needs to continue.”
He emphasized, “They're just reauthorizing the continuation of what already exists, right? We view this in those of us that have been involved in public safety, and most of public safety views this as a straight reauthorization, right? Because it's been successful. There are now over 7 million public safety connections on FirstNet, right? So there's no denying that it's been successful. What we wanna see is just a simple, straight reauthorization. Hey, this has been successful. These are the reasons why, and we can, and it's our job as members of Public Safety to educate Congress on that issue.”
In a follow-up statement, Dowd emphatically wrote, “We in public safety are looking for a straight re-authorization without any changes to that legislation. Any new technologies like the ones we discussed, such as low Earth orbit, satellites, and other technologies, can be incorporated into FirstNet as public safety determines need. What we don’t want to see happen is the legislation becoming clouded by special interest changes.”
The PSBTA is circulating a petition to support congressional reauthorization of the FirstNet Authority, which can be found online here.
