On February 22, 2024, our network partner, AT&T, experienced a broad outage that impacted public safety users of FirstNet. Based on initial reviews, the network outage occurred in the early hours of the morning on Thursday. The FirstNet network was restored by around 5:00 a.m. CST — about 3 hours since service was initially affected for some FirstNet subscribers across the country.

AT&T says the outage was due to the application and execution of an incorrect process used while expanding its network; AT&T stated it was not the result of a cyberattack. As the network operator for FirstNet, AT&T took immediate action to prioritize the restoration of public safety services. The FirstNet Authority recognizes that AT&T put public safety first during the outage. Resilience is crucial in the face of adversity, and AT&T stepped up and prioritized the restoration of FirstNet.

When it comes to public safety’s mission, every minute counts. FirstNet was built to be a reliable tool in public safety’s toolbox. From experience, I know that networks do fail and it matters how we communicate during an event, surge to fix, and learn from those failures to help prevent future events and improve response and recovery. We can and will do better for our public safety stakeholders.

As the federal agency overseeing this network, the FirstNet Authority takes our mission very seriously. We are committed to identifying the circumstances that led to the outage and working with AT&T to implement strategies and corrective actions to help prevent FirstNet from experiencing an outage like this in the future. Our contract requires AT&T to provide an after-action assessment of the root-cause analysis of the outage, and we look forward to receiving this as soon as possible. I am also meeting with AT&T leaders to discuss this outage in depth.

Further, I have established a FirstNet Authority After-Action Task Force comprised of public safety, technical, and emergency management experts from our team. The task force will help us strengthen our preparedness and emergency communications processes, so that in the event of any future outages the FirstNet Authority, together with AT&T, can understand the impact faster and surge to communicate with the public safety community.

And as we conduct our assessment of the magnitude and impact of this outage, the FirstNet Authority looks forward to sharing more information with our public safety stakeholders about how we plan to address, prepare for, and respond in the future. We are committed to improving our approach to understanding, communicating, and mitigating impacts on the network.

Next week, I look forward to joining the FirstNet Authority Board for our quarterly meeting on March 6. The outage will be the top order of business at this meeting, and we will discuss steps to strengthen the network and ensure FirstNet continues to be the most resilient and reliable broadband network for public safety. 

Challenging times have a way of bringing truths to light and making us stronger. Our truth is this: the FirstNet Authority will always put the public safety community first in everything we do. We remain confident about the dependability of FirstNet and are committed to the continuous improvement of public safety’s network.