The Nation’s Emergency Cell Network Failed in Emergencies. Lawmakers Want Change.

America’s publicly funded emergency-communications network has sometimes failed during the exact disasters it was built to endure, prompting a bipartisan push for tighter oversight. During a 2024 nationwide network outage for AT&T, which operates the FirstNet service, ambulance crews couldn’t transmit electronic medical records to hospitals. They also struggled to dispatch vehicles because they couldn’t use GPS, said Matt Zavadsky, an emergency medical technician in Fort Worth (TX). When deadly wildfires raged in Maui in 2023, residents couldn’t call for help and first responders were unable to communicate with one another, a report from the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General found late the next year. And when FBI agents responded to the Christmas Day 2020 bombing that damaged an AT&T facility in Nashville (TN), their phones had no service as they searched the rubble for survivors, said Matthew Foster, then an FBI assistant special agent in charge for Nashville. Those outages on the FirstNet network, coupled with yearslong spats over who is in charge of the $25 billion public-private partnership, are coming to the fore as a congressional reauthorization vote approaches. A House bill to re-up the program—with new accountability measures—recently passed out of committee with unanimous support.