The answer, up front
Emergency-services communications have hardened their encryption against the quantum threat, but mostly through stronger symmetric keys rather than a NIST-style post-quantum migration, and the 911 side has barely begun. The current reporting is thin: it covers radio-encryption hardening and a US 911 overview in which quantum is a minor topic. The honest summary is that public-safety networks are aware of the threat and have taken some steps, while a structured move to post-quantum algorithms for dispatch and emergency communications is not yet visible.
Radio standards already shifted
Public-safety radio standards reflect quantum concerns, though through symmetric-key hardening. An October 2024 ETSI presentation by the chair of its TETRA committee names quantum computing as a looming threat that drove stronger cryptography 1. The 2019 standard update moved encryption keys from 80 to 192 bits and authentication keys from 128 to 256 bits, aiming for 25 more years of security, and four ETSI specifications released in July 2024 publicly document TETRA's encryption and authentication algorithms 1. Larger symmetric keys resist quantum search attacks, which is a different problem from the public-key migration that post-quantum standards address.
Radio security keeps moving
RF Globalnet's July 2025 roundup notes that NIST finalized FIPS 203, 204 and 205 in August 2024, and reports that researchers broke the NATO HALFLOOP-24 link-protection cipher using about two hours of captured traffic 2. It adds that NIST chose HQC as a backup algorithm in March 2025, and that Connecticut mandated P25 Link Layer Authentication on its statewide radio network 2. The article covers first-responder post-quantum work only in passing, so it signals direction more than a sector plan.
The 911 gap
The 911 side shows the gap most clearly. Domestic Preparedness reported in October 2025 that ransomware attacks on public-safety answering points doubled in 2024, that legacy 911 relies on decades-old copper infrastructure, and that quantum processors will eventually make current encryption decryptable 3. It urges agencies to prepare equipment and algorithms now, on a five to ten year horizon, but quantum occupies only a small part of that article 3.
What this means for public-safety agencies
The near-term exposure is more operational than cryptographic, but the long-lived infrastructure argues for starting the inventory now. Agencies should map where public-key cryptography protects dispatch, records and interagency links, treat the symmetric-key radio hardening as a separate track already underway, and plan post-quantum migration into the long modernization cycles that Next Generation 911 already requires.
How ArcQubit approaches it
ArcQubit treats discovery as the practical first step where sector guidance is thin. QuCode maps where vulnerable public-key cryptography sits across emergency-communications and records systems, and QuTrust holds the migration plan so the work fits the long modernization timelines these agencies already run.