The Federal Aviation Administration has moved a central piece of its air traffic control modernisation programme to AT&T, awarding the carrier an initial $74.3 million under a contract the agency expects to grow into a multibillion-dollar deal.
The award covers initial work on FAA Enterprise Network Services, known as FENS - the communications network that will underpin the agency's broader overhaul of the US air traffic control system. FENS is intended to replace the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure network, which has carried agency communications for more than two decades and provides the backbone connecting air traffic facilities across the National Airspace System.
A reshuffle, not a clean start
The award is notable partly because the FAA had already picked a different partner. In 2023 the agency awarded Verizon a 15-year FENS contract worth more than $2 billion, under which Verizon was to design, build, operate and maintain the next-generation communications platform.
According to AeroTime, the FAA says it is restructuring FENS around AT&T in order to accelerate deployment and meet its 2028 modernisation deadline, with Verizon remaining in a supporting role. Reorganising a programme of this size several years into its life is not a small decision, and the framing the agency has chosen - speed rather than performance - is the important detail.
Why telecommunications comes first
The FENS work sits inside the FAA's Brand New Air Traffic Control System programme, an effort to replace ageing radar, telecommunications, software and hardware by the end of 2028. The agency has described telecommunications as one of the highest priorities in that programme, on the straightforward grounds that it is what physically connects the National Airspace System together. New radars and new controller displays are of limited use if the network carrying their data is running on infrastructure designed in another era.
Progress so far is measurable. The FAA says it has already replaced more than one-third of its old copper infrastructure with high-speed digital fibre.
The scale of what is being replaced
The numbers attached to the broader modernisation plan give a sense of how much physical equipment is involved. The programme calls for 5,170 new high-speed network connections using a mix of fibre, satellite and wireless technology, along with 27,625 new radios, 462 digital voice switches and 612 new radars.
Those figures describe a near-total refresh of the equipment layer that US controllers work with every day, compressed into a timeline ending in 2028. For an agency that has historically moved slowly on infrastructure - and that has faced sustained scrutiny over staffing and equipment reliability - the schedule is the most demanding part of the commitment.
What passengers will and will not see
None of this changes anything visible in a terminal. What it affects is the reliability of the plumbing underneath: the links between control facilities, the resilience of those links when something fails, and the ability of the system to carry the volume of data that newer surveillance and communications tools generate.
The initial $74.3 million is a fraction of the eventual value, and the substance of the arrangement will emerge as the FAA defines the follow-on work. For now, the significant fact is the direction of travel - the agency has decided that the fastest route to a 2028 deadline runs through a restructured contract rather than the one it signed three years ago.
Sources: AeroTime. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By James Holloway.
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