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.”
But in CalChiefs’ Jan. 28, 2026 letter to the FCC, new President Bernard Molloy II submitted a formal withdrawal and retraction of the association’s May 2025 comment “in its entirety.” Molloy explained that following additional review, the initial statement did not reflect his group’s current position. The letter emphasized the association’s continual support of PNT technology itself, but opposed the FCC’s “implementation frameworks currently under consideration.”
“We have concluded that the approach reflected in the prior filing does not sufficiently address the operational, governance, and long-term public safety considerations important to our membership,” Molloy said in the letter. “The California Fire Chiefs Association believes that any advancement of PNT technologies affecting public safety must be technology-neutral, fully vetted, operationally proven, and developed through a process that ensures transparency, broad stakeholder engagement, and protection of mission-critical public safety communications and systems.”
CalChiefs membership comes from the more than 800 fire agencies operating in the state of California.
NextNav Vice President of Government Affairs Ed Mortimer said he was “disappointed” about CalChiefs’ about-face under new leadership. “We believe CalChiefs was misinformed by special interest groups,” he said.
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