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AT&T launches dedicated FirstNet 5G standalone core network. July 31, 2026 AT&T has deployed a physically separate, purpose-built 5G SA network core to provide US first responders with enhanced security and performance FirstNet, Built with AT&T has launched a nationwide 5G standalone (SA) core network designed specifically for first responders' requirements. This dedicated 5G SA core is physically separate from AT&T's commercial core network to provide public safety users with increased security, operational control and reliability. Upgrading network resilience. The network core uses multiple geographically distributed core sites for additional redundancy, enhancing overall resilience and performance during emergencies. This dedicated architecture gives first responders improved responsiveness and faster upload speeds to support the increasingly demanding needs of modern public safety technologies. Users can only access the core through a FirstNet SIM, which secures subscriber data against potential attackers. A dedicated security operations centre also monitors the system around the clock to identify and mitigate cyber threats before they affect operations. "When first responders answer the call, they need a network built around their mission - not one designed for everyday consumer use," says Scott Agnew, President of FirstNet at AT&T. "That's exactly why Telco Magazine launched the FirstNet 5G standalone core. "Purpose-built for public safety, it provides a dedicated foundation engineered around their mission, their operations, and their evolving technology needs," Scott adds. "This milestone keeps America's public safety network strong for the future, because when our first responders succeed, our communities are safer." Optimising mission-critical traffic. The 5G SA core helps public safety agencies move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to connectivity while meeting varying network requirements. This infrastructure lays the foundation for future offerings, which AT&T plans to deliver through something it calls Adaptive Mission Performance. This will use the dedicated core's 5G standalone capabilities to optimise network traffic for distinct public safety use cases, such as live video feeds, mission-critical communications and body-worn cameras. "AT&T continues to strengthen its leadership position in public safety communications through FirstNet," says Brent Iadarola, Vice President of Research at Frost & Sullivan. "The introduction of a dedicated 5G standalone core reinforces its commitment to deliver the highest levels of security, resilience, and mission-critical performance for public safety. "This purpose-built architecture will provide first responders with a stronger foundation for next-generation communications and lifesaving applications." Transitioning public safety subscribers. Public safety subscribers have already started transitioning to the nationwide dedicated 5G SA core at no extra cost. Once more users migrate onto the new core, the company will introduce the Adaptive Mission Performance capabilities. Agencies can contact their FirstNet solutions consultant for information on migrating to the dedicated core. Individual responders on the network can also secure savings of up to 20% for family members on the AT&T commercial network. FirstNet Fusion MCX is now fully available. Some other FirstNet news broke recently. According to an AT&T statement seen by Urgent Communications, FirstNet Fusion, a 3GPP-based mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) service that the company announced back in October 2025, is now generally available for US public safety agencies to purchase. "Fusion is available to public-safety agencies across the country 0since announcing the controlled introduction last October, more than 70 agencies have started using Fusion," the statement said. FirstNet Fusion is the successor to FirstNet PTT, a MCPTT service that was sunsetted at the end of 2025. Unlike the old service, FirstNet Fusion has wide device support and supports interoperable PTT with land mobile radio (LMR) systems, through Etherstack's Fusion Link Interworking Function solution. Executives. * Brent Iadarola Vice President of Research * Scott Agnew President of FirstNet and Public Sector Mobility Company Portals

AT&T has shifted its strategic narrative from product-by-product growth metrics to a long-term forecast centred on AI-driven network traffic. Two years ago, the company emphasised immediate results like postpaid phone and fibre additions. Now, management highlights adding over 1 million Advanced Connectivity subscribers across all products and projects AI agents will generate up to 450% more traffic per task than humans, with enterprise traffic expected to grow ninefold by 2035. The underlying business remains solid. Trailing twelve-month revenue reached approximately $127 billion, up 2.6% year over year, whilst net margin of 16.9% exceeds its three-year average. However, fibre ARPU declined 1.3% year over year. Management says this reflects a deliberate strategy to maximise total Advanced Connectivity service revenue rather than optimising any single product metric.

AT&T and Verizon cut thousands more jobs as AI backlash grows. Telecom looks typically behind the curve, linking job cuts to AI while other companies rehire staff amid growing concern about its capabilities. Iain Morris, International Editor, Light Reading July 30, 2026 'Tis the age of AI abundance, or will be soon, when work is optional, robots can rustle up a cheeseburger - or whatever else you desire - at sub-millisecond speeds and money is worthless. Anyone else spouting this sort of drivel would be sent for an economics education, but it comes from modern-day Nostradamus and trillionaire Elon Musk, who believes he can foretell the future with a matchless success rate. And what an innovator he is. Jobs gave Light Reading the iPhone, Bezos brought ecommerce, Hastings delivered streaming. Where would Light Reading be without Musk's pricey electric vehicles and satellites for hard-to-reach places? Sincerity is not one of Musk's strong points. Like other tech bros, he has a vested interest in exaggerating AI's capabilities with a dramatic flourish. The more trodden path is to be a doomster, predicting AI will replace humankind. The Economist, which did the interview with Musk, recently presented an Ayn Rand-like vision of an AI future in which "owners of capital" (Musk et al) hoard resources and task robots with satisfying their needs while the jobless masses groan in misery. Abundance sounds much nicer, more Iain M. Banks than Ayn Rand. But it might be for the few. No scenario is likely to provide much comfort for telecom's own growing and groaning jobless masses, and financial results posted in recent days unsurprisingly show there has not been any reversal of a trend that predates generative AI (GenAI) by years. AT&T has quietly snipped another 2,100 jobs from its headcount so far this year, after cutting 8,000 in 2025. It employed 130,900 people at the end of June. Verizon, led by AI Armageddonist Dan Schulman, has also eliminated another 2,000 roles since March. Headcount would be even lower were it not for the acquisition of Frontier Communications at the start of this year. Plus the fiber operator, with its 13,000 people, Verizon would have had 112,600 employees at the end of 2024. Today, it has 97,600. Taboo no more. Linking cuts to investment in AI is much sexier than blaming them on routine efficiency measures designed to fatten profit margins in a slow-growing sector. Yet neither of the big US telcos needed GenAI, which did not even exist four years ago, to cut more than 179,000 jobs between 2015 and 2022, almost 40% of the earlier total. Since then, another 51,500, or 23% of the 2022 amount, have vanished. Previously, the standard company approach was to deny AI would claim jobs and tell inquisitive reporters and analysts that it would instead liberate workers from drudgery so they could focus on more stimulating tasks. GenAI rather spoiled that story by demonstrating passable creativity but a complete inability to make tea or unblock toilets. Telecom bosses like Schulman are now following the example set by Musk and AI's other soothsayers and forecasting joblessness - whether that entails happiness or despair. Not everyone has gone quite as far as the Verizon CEO, who this year told The Wall Street Journal that he thinks AI may push unemployment up to 30% in the next two to five years. But attributing job cuts to AI is now far from being taboo. Hence Telefónica Germany's revelation a few days ago that it would be cutting 1,100 full-time jobs, some 14% of the total, after "intensifying the use of artificial intelligence in key processes," in the words of CEO Santiago Argelich Hesse. Norwegian telco incumbent Telenor has a similarly gloomy forecast for employees. By exiting various markets and prioritizing automation, it was able to shrink its workforce from 38,000 in 2015 to just 10,133 by the end of 2025. It plans to continue pruning headcount at an annual rate of 4%, a spokesperson told Light Reading. By 2030, this would leave the company with fewer than 8,300 employees. At its Capital Markets Day in November, Telenor described plans for "self-driven operations enabled through AI." The UK's BT plans even heftier cuts by then. Under Allison Kirkby, its CEO since February 2024, it has cut around 12,500 jobs, finishing March this year with 107,652 employees, including subcontractors. By 2030, it expects to employ no more than 80,000 and possibly as few as 75,000, executives said in May. The completion of its fiber buildout will lessen BT's need for hardhat-wearing men and women who dig trenches and climb poles. But there is "further upside to come from AI," said Kirby. Muskian nonsense. Unfortunately, though, AI has turned out not to be especially good as a replacement for a skilled employee. It still hallucinates (or spouts Muskian nonsense), churns out grey, sausage-meat prose by mashing together people's distinctive online voices (unless it is asked to parrot a specific writer instead of simply ripping off everyone collectively) and does not actually look very intelligent at all. It certainly does not engage in "thinking," as The Economist has written. There has not, moreover, been a breakthrough to match Google's development back in 2017 of the transformer model, the basis of GenAI. Phenomena such as agentic AI, while presented as something very innovative, merely build on it. "Agentic AI is a way of applying some of that technology in a practical way, but the transformer model was the huge leap," Ishwar Parulkar, the chief technologist for AWS Industries at Amazon, told Light Reading in June last year. By turning software into a very sophisticated predictive text generator, the transformer made it easy for people to anthropomorphize the technology, even imagining it as the sentient AI of science fiction. But in the absence of a successor, AI's brainiacs have resorted to throwing more and more processing power at the problem, somehow hoping this will produce superintelligence. The law of diminishing returns has frustrated their ambitions. And AI costs have escalated to the point where it is sometimes starting to look more expensive than the people it is supposed to replace. Amid all these concerns, the new trend, leaving telcos typically behind the curve, is the reported rehiring of employees laid off by companies that were overly exuberant about AI. Ford is bringing back engineers after its automated systems proved inadequate, wrote CNBC earlier this month. The same article identifies the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and IBM as companies that have similarly pivoted. "If we don't continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in three, five years?" Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM's HR chief, reportedly said. "There's no pipeline; the well simply dries up." There's a message in that for telecom operators desperate to reach the hallowed status of Level 4 or 5 automation, when networks will supposedly run themselves without human input. If jobs disappear, so will human understanding of those roles. Operators will be dependent on AI systems whose core ingredients probably come from a few American tech giants and billionaires, including Musk. Unless AI is infallible and US authorities guarantee perpetual access, it will look like a risky position to be in. International Editor, Light Reading Iain Morris joined Light Reading as News Editor at the start of 2015 - and Light Reading mean, right at the start. His friends and family were still singing Auld Lang Syne as Iain started sourcing New Year's Eve UK mobile network congestion statistics. Prior to boosting Light Reading's UK-based editorial team numbers (he is based in London, south of the river), Iain was a successful freelance writer and editor who had been covering the telecoms sector for the past 15 years. His work has appeared in publications including The Economist (classy!) and The Observer, besides a variety of trade and business journals. He was previously the lead telecoms analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and before that worked as a features editor at Telecommunications magazine. Iain started out in telecoms as an editor at consulting and market-research company Analysys (now Analysys Mason). Want more Light Reading stories in your Google search results? Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.