Emergency Communications

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo appointed Chief Richard Carrizzo to serve as Board Chair of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority). Carrizzo is the Fire Chief for the Southern Platte Fire Protection District in Missouri who was first appointed to the FirstNet Authority Board in 2018 and reappointed in 2021, serving as the Board Vice Chair and the Advocacy Committee Chair. He succeeds Mayor Stephen Benjamin, who resigned as Board Chair effective March 31, 2023, to assume a position in the White House.

The Federal Communications Commission proposed rules to improve Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) by making them available in more than a dozen

In 2022, in recognition of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, I wrote to share my thoughts on the importance of the dedicated professionals who respond to calls to our nationwide emergency number—911. This year, as we mark National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, I am again writing to reiterate my support for the reclassification of public safety telecommunicators as first responders. As I noted last year, 911 operators are among our most essential first responders.

While most Californians have access to broadband, at least two million households (15 percent) still do not—a gap known as the digital divide. In 2021, California invested $6 billion through Senate Bill (SB) 156 to expand broadband infrastructure, address affordability, and promote digital literacy. The Public Policy Institute of California presents findings from the first year of implementation, drawing on statewide broadband data and interviews with 41 community partners, spread across 54 of California’s 58 counties. The Institute finds that:

Here is the agenda for the Federal Communications Commission's April open meeting:

A new broadband network for Colrain, Charlemont, Heath, Leyden, and Rowe (MA) that prevents major outages and improves the resiliency of internet access will be completed by June 30, 2023. The system creates three backhauls and a 10-gigabyte circuit connection shared between the towns: one in Rowe, one in Charlemont, and one in Leyden. The project also increases redundancy to prevent internet outages caused by downed utility poles, fires, or other natural disasters.

US Reps. Richard Hudson (R-NC) and Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), co-chairs of the Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus, introduced the Next Generation 9-1-1 Act to accelerate federal efforts to modernize the nation's aging 9-1-1 systems. The Next Generation 9-1-1 Act, which passed the House last Congress, would authorize $15 billion in federal funding to help state and local governments deploy Next Generation 9-1-1 systems across the country.

AT&T says that it spent more than $140 billion between 2018 and 2022, mostly on its domestic wired and wireless network. Much of the spending was in capital investments—including the FirstNet first responder network – and wireless spectrum acquisition. The carrier provided the figure in a wide-ranging update of its following operations:

The Federal Communications Commission proposed a new regulatory framework to facilitate innovative collaborations between satellite operators and wireless companies. These partnerships leverage the growth in space-based services to connect smartphone users in remote, unserved, and underserved areas. Numerous such collaborations have been launched recently, and the FCC seeks to establish clear and transparent processes to support supplemental coverage from space.