Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

21. Department of Commerce · Minor

Review FirstNet's performance and long-term value

Partially done

688 21. Department of Commerce

“Review FirstNet. Evaluate the performance and long-term value proposition of FirstNet in view of modern technologies that will render it obsolete.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    Commerce reviewed FirstNet's value and acted on the result: under the Department of Government Efficiency cost-efficiency executive order's requirement that agencies review contracts, the Secretary renegotiated the framework of AT&T's FirstNet contract, cutting roughly $1 billion of costs borne by the FirstNet Authority and obtaining about $1 billion of new network and coverage investment — $2 billion of value in total — with the money directed at accelerating the dedicated public-safety 5G core. That is an evaluation of FirstNet's value proposition carried through to a result. It is not the evaluation of FirstNet's long-term viability 'in view of modern technologies that will render it obsolete' that the Quote asks for: the review took the network's continuation as given, and NTIA also reconstituted the FirstNet Authority Board and supported reauthorizing the Authority, whose statutory sunset falls in 2027.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

partial on §3’s “a piece delivered” test. The contract review is the only published review of FirstNet in the window and it is a real one with a dated, quantified outcome; what it is not is a technology-obsolescence review.

Sequence and negative search: the NTIA sitemap’s in-window URLs read in full — the FirstNet items are the board-member recruitment notice (2025-05-01), the executive-director appointment, two rounds of board appointments (Sheriff Michael Adkinson as chairman, four further members), the AT&T deal (2026-04-01) and the Assistant Secretary’s statement on House passage of FirstNet reauthorization legislation (2026-04-21); Federal Register full text since 2025-01-20 for "FirstNet" (16 documents, mostly FCC proceedings plus the Authority’s own board-meeting notices); and jq over bills.ndjson for FirstNet, which finds the reauthorization measure — House-passed, so an attempted on a different ask about the Authority’s continuation, and not on this ask about reviewing it.

The press release’s date is taken from the NTIA sitemap’s lastmod (2026-04-01); the page itself carries no visible date.

Action
other
Object
FirstNet
ID
1919