Correction to the premise: the FirstNet franchise described in this brief — the 25-year public-safety contract and dedicated Band 14 spectrum — belongs to AT&T (T), not Verizon. Verizon has no Band 14 rights; it operates a competing product called Frontline and is actively lobbying Congress to dilute AT&T's exclusivity. Below is the accurate version of this trade.
In March 2017, the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority), an independent entity inside the Commerce Department's NTIA, awarded AT&T a 25-year contract to build and operate the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network. The prize wasn't just the contract — it was 20 MHz of nationwide 700 MHz Band 14 spectrum, licensed to the FirstNet Authority and leased exclusively to AT&T, that no competitor can touch. That's a government-anchored moat with a public-mission mandate: roughly 30,600 agencies and growing, priority-and-preemption access first responders will not give up, and a spectrum grant that functions like a long-duration annuity — recurring subscription revenue with the political cover of "supporting first responders." In March 2026, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and AT&T struck a fresh $2 billion deal — AT&T investing roughly $1 billion in new coverage while cutting FirstNet's costs by about $1 billion — reinforcing rather than loosening the arrangement ahead of the authority's February 2027 reauthorization deadline.