Network Resilience

Applying data-driven insights and business continuity strategies to keep our customers connected and protect our network against disruption.

Click through to learn about our 2025 impact in action. For detailed network resilience data, please see our 2025 data tables.

Our Approach

We invest in processes, collaborations and asset updates to ensure our network remains strong and operational. Every hour, our network teams collect billions of service assurance measurements, analyzing the data in near-real time to improve performance and deliver the best possible customer experiences.

Enhancing Our Network

We’re always expanding and enhancing our network and services, drawing on internal expertise and collaborating with leading partners to bring new technology to bear. Our strategy focuses on:

Fiber Internet Footprint: We attach as many endpoints as possible to our fiber strands, expanding coverage and enabling fast, low-latency internet service. To ensure customers have connectivity solutions that meet their needs, AT&T Fiber offers identical upload and download speeds of up to 5 gigs across parts of its footprint of more than 100 U.S. metro areas.¹
5G Expansion: We are investing in growing our 5G network, including rolling out 5G Standalone, a fully independent 5G core and radio network, purpose-built for the new generation of wireless. We also continue to support our 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. Our wireless network is the largest in America.²

Learn more about how we are investing in network developments in our Innovation & Responsible Technology issue brief.

Ensuring Network Resilience

Our engineers regularly analyze and update cell sites to maintain safe, reliable tower capacity that meets or exceeds applicable building codes. Macro cell sites are equipped with battery backups to help maintain service during power interruptions.

To drive ongoing network resilience, we also prioritize strengthening locations across our extensive physical footprint that are critical to supporting broader network operations, such as facilities that aggregate traffic from multiple cell sites or provide essential network functions. We equip these locations with high-capacity backup batteries and permanent generators or quick-connect infrastructure so portable generators can be plugged in if needed.

While we strive continuously to reduce the risk of outages, we further strengthen our network by building in layers of redundancy. We have approximately 120 large cell site aggregation hubs that combine thousands of cell sites, each connected back to geographically diverse data centers. To help ensure those aggregation hubs aren’t disconnected when one location goes down, we have invested significantly in creating tertiary links to alternative locations for nearly all of them. By doing so, we can keep more customers connected even during times of disruption.

Using Data to Prioritize Response Efforts

Getting customers back online following outages is a priority. To do so efficiently, we need to understand where to target our efforts. While customers may be primarily served by one cell site, overlaps in coverage may mean that, even if that primary cell service is lost, they can still get connected via another cell site. Understanding this, we leverage data on how many customers are served by different cell sites to consider which assets to restore first.

Proactively Managing Weather Disturbances

Building strong networks that can withstand environmental pressures relies on good preparation. We proactively monitor weather-related events that could impact our infrastructure, including through:

AT&T Weather Operations Center: AT&T meteorologists monitor potential weather-related threats so we can implement mitigation measures such as preparing disaster response equipment and standby personnel. They also issue updates to network operations teams to help them prepare and protect critical infrastructure from weather impacts.
Network Disaster Recovery: We have invested more than $1 billion over the past three decades in our Network Disaster Recovery Program, which helps rapidly restore connectivity to disaster-affected areas. Following a disaster, we activate our internal Emergency Operations Center to coordinate all business areas around timely recovery efforts. We implement procedures to quickly restore network functionality, provide critical resources to impacted employees, field customer inquiries and return or establish service in impacted communities.

To learn more about our network resilience approach, visit AT&T Disaster Recovery. Customers can access service-specific information about local network outages on our outages website.

Harnessing the Power of Data

AT&T collaborates with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to use best-in-class climate data, which helps us understand how extreme weather events could affect our network and operations—down to the neighborhood level— up to 30 years in the future.

Prioritizing investments for existing sites: We use our forward-looking wind, drought, wildfire and flood datasets to better understand which sites could be exposed to severe weather. Using these projections, we have developed a vulnerability index to identify which sites could benefit from enhanced hardening against escalating hazards.
Assessing impacts in network planning and site design: We incorporate severe weather risk scores into the site selection software used for new cell site planning. Equipped with forward-looking insights, our engineers can proactively select lower-risk sites, reducing disaster-related downtime and costs while enhancing long-term resilience. We also integrate relevant data into wireline planning and design systems, enabling engineers to identify areas at risk for future hazard exposure and proactively protect new equipment. When we compare real-world impacts from major weather events to our risk scores, we find that higher risk scores are consistently associated with a greater likelihood of storm damage.

Ensuring Business Continuity

Our global team of certified business continuity experts uses a risk-based approach to develop business resumption plans. This is guided by our Business Continuity Management Program, which covers management disciplines, processes and techniques for supporting employees and critical business operations during significant disruption. The program is certified to ISO 22301:2021 and aligns with:

Through the Business Continuity Management Program, we maintain recovery strategies and procedures that are updated, exercised and certified at least annually. To support tailored incident responses, we also have business unit-specific continuity plans, each of which is assessed and exercised annually to ensure any strategy gaps are identified and addressed.

Keeping First Responders Connected

FirstNet®, Built with AT&T is the only nationwide, high-speed broadband communications platform dedicated to and purpose-built for America’s first responders and the extended public safety community. FirstNet is designed to provide first responders with dedicated coverage and capacity when they need it, as well as benefits like always-on priority and preemption across all AT&T 5G and LTE commercial spectrum in addition to public safety’s high-quality Band 14 spectrum. This enables them to communicate quickly and reliably. We built and maintain America’s public safety network in public–private partnership with the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority),³ driving public safety-centric improvements in:

Coverage: FirstNet is the largest network² for public safety in the country, covering nearly three million square miles and more than 99% of America’s first responders.
Emergency response support: Public safety agencies can access a dedicated fleet of over 190 portable cell sites, in addition to utilizing the more than 750 AT&T assets when available. In fact, FirstNet is the only network in the country with deployable assets available exclusively to public safety’s critical communications.
Impact: FirstNet is dedicated to supporting public safety, no matter the emergency. From everyday emergencies and planned events to disaster situations like active shootings, bombings, plane crashes, hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, mudslides and more, first responders have the reliable connectivity they require to communicate and coordinate their response.

Together with the federal government, we continue to expand and evolve FirstNet so public safety remains at the forefront of innovative, lifesaving technologies. Through a series of strategic investments totaling more than $8 billion over the next decade, we will deliver full 5G capabilities on FirstNet with the creation of a dedicated stand-alone 5G core, expand mission-critical services and enhance coverage.

These network enhancements will deliver faster speeds, increased capacity and enhanced service quality so first responders can remain reliably connected during everyday operations, large-scale events and emergencies.

Learn more about FirstNet in our Community Engagement & Investment issue brief.

Employee Support Teams

The success of our Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) and FirstNet teams is bolstered by hundreds of employees across the business who help when disasters and outages occur. These passionate employees are deployed to locations across the U.S. to help in recovery and restoration efforts. Full-time employees who meet specific eligibility criteria can apply to join either support team. They receive specialized web-based and hands-on training.

NDR Support Team: Members assist in restoring critical communication services during disasters. This includes supporting emergency communications, portable power, base camp logistical support and hazmat response. We have several strategic locations across the U.S. to ensure we can deploy quickly.
FirstNet Response Operations Group™(ROG): Members are dedicated to help ensuring first responders and the public safety community stay connected.

Network Resilience Governance

Across AT&T, several roles govern network resilience and business continuity:

Board of Directors: Receives regular reports on network matters from executive leadership, primarily from the Chief Operations Officer.
Chief Operations Officer: Has day-to-day oversight of network resilience and business continuity efforts.
Network Planning, Construction & Engineering: Oversees engineering, build and operations of wireline and wireless networks.
Network Operations: Provides production support for network operations, energy optimization and infrastructure provisioning. Also manages business continuity planning, the Global Technology Operations Center and 24/7 network monitoring.

Learn about our network management policies on our Network Practices website.

Stakeholder Engagement

We work closely with local communities on all construction activities, including local and state processes for permitting, advance notice and infrastructure investment approvals. If a community expresses concerns about AT&T network investments or activities, they are collected through our state External & Legislative Affairs teams and our Office of the President and reported to the appropriate department for resolution.

As a founding member of the O-RAN Alliance, we also engage with industry peers to advance more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. We have participated in major opensource initiatives designed to support openness, visibility and security; maximize speed; and accelerate innovation while controlling costs.

Impact In Action

Our 2025 Impact in Action

Advancing Network Performance

At the end of 2025, our global network carried an average of 1 exabyte of data daily, an increase of 386% since 2018. In 2025, we invested over $22.4 billion, primarily in our wireless and wireline networks, including capital investments and wireless spectrum acquisitions.⁴

Building on our commitment to deliver industry-leading connectivity, we are also fast-tracking our fiber network rollout to reach more than 60 million total customer locations nationwide by the end of 2030.⁵

At the end of 2025, our fiber network reached nearly 32 million consumer and business locations. Additionally, we reached an agreement to acquire Lumen’s Mass Markets fiber business, which we expect to accelerate our mission of delivering world-class fiber connectivity.

We continue to invest in 5G expansion to deliver high-quality, high-speed connectivity. As of year-end 2025, AT&T 5G using low-band spectrum reaches nearly 322 million people in more than 27,700 cities and towns in the U.S. We also expanded our spectrum portfolio with the $23 billion acquisition of EchoStar, which will help us ensure broader, faster and more reliable service for our customers. Underpinning our network investments, we introduced the AT&T Guarantee®, our commitment to providing the connectivity you can depend on, or we’ll make it right with a bill credit for any unexpected downtime.

Lastly, in 2025, built-in network backups known as tertiary links helped prevent two potential network outages, keeping customers connected during fiber damage and maintenance events that otherwise could have caused hours-long service disruptions.

For the latest information on our deployment and coverage, visit the AT&T Network website.

Network Transformation Initiative

We began the first phase of a multi-year initiative to modernize AT&T’s wireline core infrastructure. This project, which is currently in the construction phase, will consolidate three core networks into a single software-driven platform, which we expect to greatly enhance network resiliency, security and operational efficiency. Our first milestone will focus on foundational routing redundancy, as our initial market build and pre-deployment activities launched in 2025.

Strengthening Our Resilience

Investing in Predictive Disaster Response

The AT&T Weather Operations Center uses our Severe Weather Asset Impact Model to gather data on sites most susceptible to hurricane impacts. This machine learning tool uses historical hurricane information to predict future impacts.

The model also utilizes Power Scope, a national wind modeling tool, to review forecast wind data along with historical data to determine which areas are most likely to lose power during wind events. This allows us to proactively prioritize generator deployment based on wind speed predictions, helping us prevent power outages before they occur.

Disaster Preparedness Efforts

We also advanced our commitment to long-term resilience through our updated Flood Risk Management Policy to minimize potential future flood impacts. The policy incorporates storm surge intelligence with expanded building code guidelines to determine elevated platform heights at operating and proposed wireless cell sites, in addition to new generator installations. In 2025, we piloted three sites in Florida, with plans to expand in 2026.

We also upgraded our AT&T Storm Surge Tool with a comprehensive dashboard that identifies high-risk locations and guides proactive flood-mitigation efforts. Using NOAA’s SLOSH model, FEMA zone designations and our Coastal Flood Risk Score from Argonne National Laboratory, the tool helps determine optimal platform heights and reduce downtime, water damage and recovery costs.

We further strengthened our resilience against service disruptions, especially those caused by systems overheating during a thermal event. In 2025, we continued to invest in remote triage capabilities, conduct building studies on critical cloud locations and advance targeted upgrades to HVAC systems to help prevent overheating and ensure network reliability for our customers. For more information on how we’re modernizing our HVAC systems, see our Energy Management brief.

Fighting Copper Theft

In 2025, we also enhanced our efforts to fight copper theft, which strengthens network resilience by helping to prevent outages and protecting critical communications infrastructure. We escalated our antitheft program to confront the surge of more than 10,000 copper theft and vandalism incidents nationwide, working hand-in-hand with law enforcement and offering rewards of up to $20,000 for tips leading to arrests and convictions. We also added further protection to our network by locking and welding manhole lids, installing traceable markings on critical wiring, and deploying sensors and surveillance to reduce service disruptions, protect public-safety communications and minimize costly repairs.

Responding When Disaster Strikes

In 2025, AT&T showed up for communities across the country, supporting recovery and resilience in the face of natural disasters. Following the California wildfires, central Texas floods and numerous winter storms, our Network Disaster Recovery team mobilized quickly to restore critical connectivity. From deploying satellite assets to restoring service for first responders, we helped keep families, first responders and local organizations connected.

Enhancing First Responder Communications

During 2025, the FirstNet ROG™ triaged and deployed over 2,730 solutions to support public safety’s emergency communications needs. As we expand our network, we are working directly with public safety officials to determine where new coverage or upgrades are most needed. This approach is unique among telecommunications providers, demonstrating AT&T’s commitment to safety and first responders. In 2025, we also announced FirstNet Fusion, the first mission-critical platform linking teams across virtually any radio system or U.S. wireless carrier.

In 2024, we began implementing the FirstNet Authority’s strategic investments toward FirstNet 5G and enhanced coverage, building new towers based on public safety needs. In 2025, we surpassed nearly eight million connections and expanded the dedicated FirstNet fleet with over 190 portable cell sites nationwide, including in Alaska and Hawaii. Notably, AT&T is the only carrier in Hawaii with portable cell sites stationed year-round across the islands.

Working alongside AST SpaceMobile, we also began testing public safety-grade direct-to-cellular satellite connectivity on FirstNet in 2025. This has allowed select public safety agencies to trial satellite communications, extending the reach of the FirstNet network for first responders in rural or off-grid locations.

In 2025, FirstNet provided key coverage to first responders during the Texas floods, with team members on the ground within 24 hours providing support and deploying assets where needed. Learn more about FirstNet in our Community Engagement & Investment issue brief.

Disclaimer

FirstNet and the FirstNet logo are registered trademarks and service marks of the First Responder Network Authority. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

2025 Data

Network Resilience Data

	2022	2023	2024	2025
Capital investment and acquisition of wireless spectrum⁶	$34.5B	$26.5B	$22.4B	$22.4B
Network traffic on an average business day (petabytes)	553.0	680.6	824.6	1,000.0