California Fire Chiefs Withdraw Initial Support for NextNav
The fire chiefs voiced strong support in May 2025 for NextNav’s new technology, before shifting gears just last month.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2026 – The California Fire Chiefs Association revoked its initial support of the Federal Communications Commission’s granting of an experimental license for a 5G GPS backup system, citing concerns over public safety.
The FCC granted this license to geolocation company NextNav to test its proposed 5G GPS backup system in San Jose, Calif., in December 2025 with plans to operate this system online through December 2027. The project aims to use existing 5G cellular technology to provide position, navigation, and timing (PNT) signals from the ground as a supplemental system instead of relying solely on satellites.
In May 2025, then-CFCA President Brian Fennessy wrote that the association “strongly supports the FCC’s effort” because PNT technology is a “critical function” for first responders, further emphasizing that NextNav could “provide life-saving advancements to an entire ecosystem of software, mapping, and situational awareness tools that public safety operations rely on every day and in emergencies.”
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