House Commerce Staff Hoping for FirstNet Reauthorization This Year
The agency will sunset in February 2027 unless Congress reauthorizes it
Aug. 18, 2026 – House Commerce Committee staffers are hoping to get the First Responder Network Authority reauthorized by the end of the year, they said Tuesday at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum in Aspen, Colorado.
Johanna Thomas, senior Democratic counsel to the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, said reauthorizing FirstNet was “one of our biggest priorities of getting accomplished before the end of this year.”
“We’re going to be prioritizing things like FirstNet, as she mentioned, we have a couple security bills that we want to continue work on,” said John Lin, senior Republican counsel to the full House Commerce Committee. “We’re hoping that the end of the year is productive.”
The FirstNet Authority oversees FirstNet, the nationwide first responder network owned and operated by AT&T under a contract with the Commerce Department.
FNA’s authorization will expire February 22, 2027 unless Congress reauthorizes it, something that users and lawmakers broadly agree would be disruptive.
The House unanimously passed a reauthorization bill in April that would increase Commerce’s oversight of FNA, a response to several negative reports from an agency watchdog over the years.
The Senate will have to pass reauthorization legislation, and the House will have to adopt any changes to its version. The chambers’ commerce committees, which oversee the issue, were apparently unable to come to a deal before Congress left for its August recess.
“We look forward to working with the Senate to get it across the finish line,” Thomas said.
Courtney Reinhard, chief Republican counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee, participated remotely in the panel, but didn’t address FirstNet.
The House is due back in D.C. Aug. 31, and the Senate, which left later, will return to work Sept. 14.
In June, a set of 17 first responder and local government groups had asked Senate Commerce leaders to take up reauthorization and “give serious consideration to” the House framework.
Some other groups led by the Faternal Order of Police have opposed the bill for its increased oversight, fearing bureaucratic delays for the agency. The FOP circulated its own draft language in June.
In a January hearing, Senate Commerce lawmakers expressed support for increased oversight of FirstNet Authority.
Commerce Department inspector general findings “make clear that the current governing structure has not provided consistent performance oversight,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said during the hearing.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was not at the hearing, which was led by the committee’s Telecommunications and Media Subcommittee.
AT&T has supported the House bill. New Street Research policy advisor Blair Levin said in a research note earlier this year that the House legislation was “generally favorable” for AT&T, as it focused on changing the FNA’s governing structure rather than the underlying economics of the company's contract with the government.
AT&T was eligible for up to $6.5 billion in federal funding from spectrum auction proceeds to construct the network, which finished in 2023, and it’s now funded by subscriber fees paid by public safety agencies using the network. AT&T is supposed to pay FNA a total of $18 billion from those fees over the course of the 25-year contract, which was inked in 2017, and much of the money will be reinvested back into FirstNet.
At the hearing, Sens. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said they wanted more transparency into vendor contracts related to FirstNet.
