For Immediate Release
July 15, 2025
Contact: Molly Weedn
molly@weednpa.com
AB 470 will accelerate investments in modern communication technologies while ensuring no resident or community is left behind
SACRAMENTO, CA – Today, Assembly Bill 470 (McKinnor), passed out of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications with the support of Californians for a Connected Future (CCF), a broad and diverse coalition of 140 organizations, including Tribal leaders, social justice and anti-recidivism advocates, veterans, ethnic businesses, education, youth, community and non-profit organizations.
AB 470, which represents a responsible and balanced approach to modernizing California’s communications network, will accelerate investments in communication technologies that will move California forward and prepare it for the future.
Specifically, AB 470 will:
- Ensure a careful, phased-in, multi-year, modernization process that protects all Californians during the transition to a next-generation communications network
- Provide robust consumer protections
- Strengthen public safety
- Ensure services remain affordable
- Prepare California for the future
- Strengthen California’s modern communications expansion efforts
In a recent guest commentary, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Foundation, a non-profit that supports first responders and emergency personnel with resources needed for effective prevention and preparedness, stated that:
“Strengthening the resiliency of our communities needs to be a priority for our policymakers…
Over the last several months, policy leaders and key stakeholders representing a variety of interests have held collaborative conversations to ensure AB 470 represents the needs of diverse communities across the state, including the public safety community.
The result is sound policy that represents a thoughtful, forward-looking approach to modernizing California’s communications network….
As a state prone to natural disasters and unpredictable weather events, we must have modernized communications systems that ensure Californians have access to reliable information in real time. We also need to ensure our public safety community has the tools needed to locate people faster, communicate clearly during emergencies, and issue alerts and warnings, among other critical information needs.”
Emergency personnel and safety officials, like those that the San Diego Fire-Rescue Foundation support, rely on cutting-edge, reliable advanced technologies to communicate with the public to send vital real-time updates and evacuation orders such as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) when time is of the essence.
AB 470 will move California forward, helping Californians have access to the most updated modes of communication that keep communities safe and support decision-making in times of firefighting, floods, landslides, earthquakes, school safety and security, and other search and rescue response and recovery operations.
About Californians for a Connected Future
Californians for a Connected Future (CCF) is a broad and diverse group of organizations dedicated to innovative, reliable, fast and affordable communications for all. CCF supports Assembly Bill 470 which is being developed as part of a comprehensive stakeholder process to prioritize investments in advanced communications options for all, while ensuring no Californian or community is left behind. CCF is a project of USTelecom – The Broadband Association. For more information, visit: www.caconnectedfuture.org