FirstNet Can't Verify Who's Using Its $6.5 Billion Network
Summary
FirstNet Authority oversees AT&T's $6.5 billion, 25-year contract to build the wireless network the country's police, firefighters, and paramedics are supposed to use exclusively during emergencies. Commerce's Inspector General found FirstNet Authority still can't verify that only eligible first responders are on it -- about 96,000 subscriber records carried garbled or missing agency names, and when the watchdog asked to see eligibility files for a sample of users, both AT&T and FirstNet Authority's own lawyers advised against letting it. The audit quantifies $351.6 million in financial risk: $242.6 million in disincentive payments FirstNet Authority may never collect from AT&T because eligibility was never adequately verified, plus $108.9 million misallocated to four territories under a separate payment-formula error the audit also found.
A network for public safety, policed by nobody who can check
Under the contract, AT&T decides who counts as an eligible "public safety entity" and FirstNet Authority is supposed to oversee that determination. In practice, FirstNet Authority did not require AT&T to hand over its own eligibility policy as a contract deliverable until July 2024 -- more than seven years into the contract⧉ -- and even then, the contract only let FirstNet Authority use the policy "for informational, educational, and/or awareness purposes," not to measure whether AT&T was actually complying. The one document FirstNet Authority does receive every month, AT&T's subscription report, is riddled with errors: about 96,000 agency-name entries in the October 2024 report were incorrect, missing, or unrelated to any public-safety function, including literal placeholder text like "Unknown," "Bulk Verify," and single letters. FirstNet Authority rejected the July-through-September 2024 reports outright and, as of the audit, still hadn't accepted the following six months' worth.
View data as table
| Disincentive payments FirstNet risks losing | 242,635,137 | $242.6 million AT&T would owe across its first two disincentive-payment years if it misses device-connection targets -- money FirstNet Authority can't reliably collect because it can't verify eligibility to prove AT&T missed the targets |
|---|---|---|
| Payments misallocated to territories with no targets | 108,941,415 | $108.9 million a QASP formula error incorrectly counts toward four U.S. territories -- the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands -- instead of the states that actually have connection targets |
The watchdog asked to see the files. Both sides' lawyers said no.
When tried to independently check FirstNet Authority's oversight, it asked on February 4, 2025 for supporting eligibility documentation on a sample of just 20 users. FirstNet Authority reported back that when it tried to schedule the review meeting, ["AT&T as well as FirstNet [Authority] legal ... advised against having the participation."](https://www.oig.doc.gov/wp-content/OIGPublications/-26-016-A_Report_Redacted_SECURED.pdf) 's formal position is that this contravenes its statutory authority under the Inspector General Act of 1978 to timely access all records available to FirstNet Authority. FirstNet Authority's own review wasn't much more capable: it took over seven months and four separate AT&T-scheduled "restricted sessions" just to check 143 users, and even then, 9 of the 19 users FirstNet Authority initially selected for documentation review had no eligibility paperwork available at all. In the sample, ten agency names were listed simply as "Missing" -- AT&T itself couldn't identify four of them -- and one emergency medical technician's credentials had expired in 2022 but the technician was still listed as an eligible user two years later.
Ten years of the same warning
None of this is new. Commerce has listed the NPSBN as a top management challenge for the department every single fiscal year from 2017 through 2026 -- ten years running -- and this is the eighth in a string of audits and management alerts since March 2023 documenting FirstNet Authority's contract-oversight gaps, including a February 2024 nationwide network outage and a finding that the network "was not always available to first responders during the catastrophic 2023 Maui wildfires."⧉ FirstNet Authority's own statutory authority to run the network expires in 2027 unless Congress reauthorizes it. In its formal response to this audit, NTIA argued the report offered only "scant evidence" that unverified users could lead to improper payments -- but concurred with all 11 of 's recommendations anyway, including independently verifying eligibility before FirstNet Authority issues any more milestone payments to AT&T.
- FirstNet Authority manages AT&T's $6.5 billion, 25-year contract ($100 billion ceiling) to build the network reserved for first responders; AT&T has already been paid about $6.47 billion of it.
- identified $351.6 million in quantified financial risk from inadequate eligibility oversight: up to $242.6 million in disincentive payments FirstNet Authority may never collect from AT&T, plus $108.9 million misallocated to four U.S. territories with no connection targets.
- About 96,000 records in AT&T's own subscription report -- the only document FirstNet Authority regularly reviews -- carried garbled or missing agency names, and itself was denied access to eligibility files it requested for a 20-user sample.
- This is the tenth straight year the NPSBN has been listed as a Commerce top management challenge and the eighth report since March 2023 to flag FirstNet Authority's contract-oversight failures; NTIA concurred with all 11 new recommendations while disputing the audit's evidence.
All figures come from the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General's Audit of FirstNet Authority's Oversight of User Eligibility for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (Report No. -26-016-A), issued April 14, 2026. Some dollar figures FirstNet Authority designated business-sensitive are redacted from the public report and are not used here. This piece independently recomputed the combined $351,576,552 risk total, its 5.4% share of the $6.5 billion contract's base value, the $242,635,137 disincentive-risk figure's two-year breakdown, and the ten-consecutive-year count of top-management-challenge listings; all match figures either stated directly in the report or reproducible from its own numbers.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Inspector General, Office of Audit and Evaluation, Audit of FirstNet Authority's Oversight of User Eligibility for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (Report No. OIG-26-016-A) (2026-04-14) — The primary document -- a Commerce performance audit of FirstNet Authority's oversight of who is allowed on the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN), the AT&T-built network reserved for police, fire, EMS, emergency management, and the National Guard. Source for the contract terms, the denial-of--access episode, the subscription-report data-quality findings, the 143-user eligibility-verification review, the potential monetary impacts in Appendix 3, the list of prior reports in Appendix 1, and NTIA's formal response in Appendix 4. Some dollar figures FirstNet Authority designated business-sensitive are redacted from the public version and are not used here; only unredacted figures are cited. oig.doc.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Inspector General, DOC OIG Hotline (2026-07-19) — Confirms the Commerce 's public Fraud, Waste & Abuse Hotline -- the same office that issued this audit and that accepts complaints about mismanagement of NPSBN oversight from the public, DOC employees, or contractors. oig.doc.gov · original document
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FirstNet -- the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network -- exists for one purpose: a wireless network reserved for police, firefighters, paramedics, dispatchers, and the National Guard during emergencies, built by AT&T under a $6.5 billion, 25-year contract with a $100 billion ceiling⧉ that FirstNet Authority awarded in March 2017. AT&T has already collected roughly $6.47 billion of it. A Commerce Department Inspector General audit released April 14, 2026⧉ found that FirstNet Authority still cannot verify that only eligible first responders are the ones connected to the network, and quantified $351.6 million in payments now at risk across two separate findings -- equal to roughly 5.4% of the entire contract's base value.