The First Responder Network Authority has approved 220 new rural cell sites for AT&T and allocated $1.1 billion of its fiscal 2027 budget to network improvements, bringing the number of FirstNet sites in development to 350 on top of 1,000 completed in 2025. The fiscal year started this month, and the announcement came alongside the Public Safety Broadband Technology Association's Vision 2026: FirstNet Users Summit, which drew about 430 public safety attendees.

The push reflects one persistent complaint. At last year's event, Matt Walsh, assistant VP for FirstNet and NG911 products at AT&T, recalled an attendee standing up in a user requirements session and asking for three things: "coverage, coverage and coverage." Walsh called a pin-map activity at this year's summit — where attendees marked the places they need coverage and submitted written requests — an "innovative way" to engage with public safety users.

Where does the user data go?

The PSBTA plans to share the map inputs with the FirstNet Authority, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, said Richard Carrizzo, president of PSBTA and a former Kansas City-area fire chief who served six years on the FirstNet Authority board. The effort adds a grassroots layer to the data collection the authority already uses to steer AT&T's builds.

"They have their own way. We're just providing a different type of data," Carrizzo said. He wants the authority to hold more data-gathering sessions nationwide and "come up with a strategic plan to share with AT&T ... and come together to get better coverage."

He acknowledged the commercial limits. "Coverage will probably always be an issue in the states and on the islands. And I get it. The carriers have got to make business decisions. They're not going to put a tower where there's only a few people," he said. The question, in his words, is how the two sides "work together on ensuring coverage that makes sense financially on both sides and best meets public safety needs."

Do 350 sites matter at scale?

A few hundred sites looks small in a country with nearly half a million cell sites. Walsh called it "a tremendous investment." The 350 public-private partnership-funded sites are incremental to AT&T's commercial build, and traffic flows both ways: FirstNet users get priority on the new towers, while AT&T's consumer and business customers use them when first responders do not need pre-emption.

One example is a new 5G site in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, a small coastal town. "We likely would have never been able to have the business justification to go build there. But because of this process and the feedback from public safety, we launched a tower in that location that probably never would have been built," Walsh said.

Ken Rehbehn, analyst with CritComm Insights, offered a split verdict on the program overall. "[FirstNet Authority] have significantly undershot what they could have accomplished in the years since the legislation was created. But you cannot deny the value of FirstNet being established and resetting the competitive picture in the US to give public safety agencies the priority they need," he said. FirstNet brought public safety communications quality of service, priority and pre-emption — and pushed rivals to respond with their own offerings for coverage and resilience.

What about satellite direct-to-device?

AT&T expects to launch mobile satellite direct-to-device services no earlier than next year, depending on its partner AST SpaceMobile. The satellite operator expects to have 45 satellites in orbit in early 2027 but has so far launched 13, behind schedule; it has previously said roughly 25 satellites are needed for intermittent US coverage. AT&T has built four ground gateways to support D2D and is trialing the service.

Until then, first responders who want satellite connectivity on their smartphones have one option: T-Mobile's T-Satellite, available for more than a year through an exclusive Starlink tie-up. It also comes via T-Priority, T-Mobile's first responder service delivered as a network slice on its 5G standalone core. Rehbehn said "public safety folks in rural US are very pleased with the capabilities" of T-Satellite. T-Mobile does not disclose T-Priority or T-Satellite customer numbers or D2D traffic splits, but indicated usage is very low and concentrated in national parks.

AT&T and Verizon bet on AST SpaceMobile for mobile broadband D2D, whereas T-Satellite mostly handles texting and light data. The three carriers have also formed a satellite D2D joint venture targeting "coverage dead zones," while keeping their existing satellite partnerships in place. Supplementing coverage for FirstNet users has long been part of AT&T's D2D strategy.

"Public safety is really excited about satellite ... We definitely see satellite as something that's going to be able to provide that connectivity — voice, data access — to the network where it's not available today," Walsh said. Carrizzo noted a heavily attended satellite session at the summit showed users see D2D as "a viable tool." AT&T already uses LEO and GEO satellites for backhaul to temporary units such as cell towers on wheels and rapid deployables; D2D extends satellite links directly to devices.

What else is shipping on the network?

The event also covered Fusion, AT&T's push-to-talk platform, and features enabled by the 5G standalone core. Fusion "brings together multiple communication types," including cellular and land mobile radio, so agencies can "communicate and operate as one," Walsh said. The 5G SA core delivers 15% faster uplink speeds, and public safety is "using more uplink than anybody else on our network" to share situational awareness. "With Fusion, first responders can hit a button and share live with their talk group whatever they're looking at so they get a live video feed of the situation," he said.

Public safety users set a hard adoption bar. Carrizzo said most will not touch a new product until it works "100% of the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year" — a standard that applies to FirstNet, T-Priority and Verizon's Frontline alike. With the $1.1 billion fiscal 2027 budget now in effect and 350 sites in development, the next measurable milestones are the pace of those builds and AST SpaceMobile's satellite count heading into 2027.