FirstNet provides America’s first responders and essential workers with the largest network for public safety. The network reaches nearly 3 million square miles of coverage across the U.S.¹

With Band 14 and AT&T commercial bands, FirstNet wireless coverage reaches over 99% of Americans.² It supports more first responders than any other network in the country. 

¹Compares ground-based cellular networks.

²Coverage not available everywhere.

Band 14 is the nationwide, high-quality spectrum set aside by the federal government for FirstNet. This makes America’s public safety network different from commercial networks like T-Mobile and Verizon, which do not have access to spectrum reserved specifically for public safety.

When commercial networks get crowded or go down, Band 14 can be cleared and locked for use for first responders and the extended public safety community. This helps them stay connected and communicate during emergencies.

Band 14 is also the only spectrum in the U.S. that supports High-Power User Equipment (HPUE) at the highest-allowable power levels. That means that only FirstNet can enable HPUE devices to transmit six times the signal strength of the same device on another provider’s network. This improves coverage in hard-to-reach places like basements, elevators and rural areas.

Band 14 helps keep critical communications working when lives are on the line.

FirstNet is built for public safety. It offers reliability, security and accountability. It helps protect first responders’ mission-critical communications with a dedicated network and always-on priority and preemption across all AT&T 5G, 4G commercial bands and their own dedicated Band 14 spectrum, when needed.

Overseen by the federal government, FirstNet is designed to meet public safety’s unique needs. It evolves based on their feedback. Unlike commercial networks, FirstNet was built from the ground up with and for public safety. It helps provide public safety with connectivity and advanced capabilities to help them better coordinate their incident response and support critical missions.

Reliability is critical in emergencies. FirstNet is the only network with a mandate to never throttle public safety traffic (temporary slowing of mobile data speeds) anywhere in the U.S., so public safety can keep consistent access to vital information.