On March 31, AT&T and the FirstNet Authority announced that total connections to the FirstNet nationwide public safety broadband network increased to 7.1 million across 30,000 law enforcement and first responder agencies during the first quarter of 2025. FirstNet was constructed and is operated by AT&T, and it is overseen by FirstNet Authority, an agency in the NTIA.
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As explained in my February 2024 blog post, "FirstNet's Public Safety Communications Network Continues to Grow,"widespread adoption by law enforcement and first responder agencies of FirstNet – as well as competing enterprise networks, such as VerizonFrontline and T-Mobile's T-Priority – undermines the Biden FCC's public safety rationale for its now-vacated public utility regulation of broadband Internet access services.
In the Securing and Safeguarding the Open Internet Order (2024), the Commission officially rebranded public utility regulation as a public safety measure. Public utility regulation has a long history. However, the idea that public utility regulation was vital to public safety and national security appears to have been entirely unknown until late 2023, when the Biden FCC launched its efforts to impose such regulation on high-speed broadband Internet services under Title II of the Communications Act. What a coincidence!
The Securing and Safeguarding the Open Internet Order was vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on January 2 of this year. In MCP No. 185 (2025), the court concluded that broadband Internet services are best understood as lightly regulated "information services" under Title I of the Act and not "telecommunications services" under Title II.
On April 28, the Free State Foundation filed reply comments in the FCC's Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding. In those reply comments, FSF President Randolph May and I recommended that the newly constituted FCC, under Chairman Brendan Carr's leadership, delete the now-vacated public utility rules from the Code of Federal Regulations. FSF's reply comments also recommend that the Commission delete many other outdated, harmful, and unnecessary regulations of communications services and close proceedings in which the agency previously had recommended additional regulations. FSF's initial comments in the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding – focused on outdated, harmful, and unnecessary regulations of video services – were filed on April 11.
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