Inside the Times Square phone store that powers New Year’s Eve emergency communications

To better manage emergency communications and to coordinate responses during the legendary New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York City’s Times Square this year, the New York City Police Department and AT&T turned the company’s retail phone store in the metro hub into an operations center.

The location of the AT&T store, which is located centrally in Times Square’s busy “Crossroads of the World” and right beneath the famed ball drop, allow it to function as a multi‑agency coordination center. A mix of over a dozen federal, state and local agencies — including the NYPD, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services — used the store this year as an ad hoc emergency communications hub.

Sebastian Donaruma, division chief of the FirstNet Response Operations Group, told StateScoop that use of the store during the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebrations started three years ago while ringing in 2023. For the first year, the store only hosted Donaruma as he managed the FirstNet supports, an AT&T colleague and a few curious first responders dropping in and out as the celebrations went on. 

The next year, when ringing in 2024, operations from the store expanded, as its convenient location quickly became a valuable asset to state and local emergency responders. 

“The second year we did it, a local first responding agency who had their command vehicle right outside our store was having difficulties connecting with their then-current provider, and asked us for help,” Donaruma said. “And I said, ‘sure,’ and we gave them some FirstNet stuff to help them get connectivity. Now, we provide that for them every year since then.”

And last year, severe storms in the area around Manhattan threatened to cancel the celebrations. But with the AT&T store as an emergency operations center, the agencies managing the technological monitoring of the situation were able to consolidate in one location. 

“It’s kind of just natively grown as first responders have seen us there and realize that we’re there to partner with and assist them. It’s just organically grown into more of us working with them, and providing them what they need on top of just wireless connectivity,” Donaruma continued. “But more importantly, we’re building a place where they can do briefings, a place where they can come in and just get out of the weather for a few minutes.”

FirstNet’s dedicated Band 14 spectrum ensures first responders from the NYPD, the city’s fire department and other responding agencies can communicate, even when commercial networks are overloaded or they fail during an emergency. Additionally, a compact rapid deployable — or CRD — mini cell tower is staged on-site in “hot standby” mode, so it can be activated within seconds if the main network fails.

And while over the years, Donaruma said they are grateful to have not had to activate any of their assets during a New Year’s Eve celebration, he said they count the event as a “success” when the public never notices anything at all.

“A lot of the stuff that FirstNet and public safety does goes unnoticed. When everything goes right, nobody knows about that. It’s when something bad happens that everybody hears about it,” he continued. “So, our success is — and it’s not good for the business — but our success is when nobody even knows that we were there or what we’re doing, because everything worked as it should.”