Mamdani Kills T-Mobile School Internet Deal Days Before Classes Start

New York City's wireless internet service for 350,000 public school Chromebooks is set to shut off on August 31, just ten days before the new school year begins on September 10, 2026. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has canceled the T-Mobile service portion of a multi-year contract signed under former Mayor Eric Adams, ending a flat $3.5 million monthly fee the city paid regardless of how many cellular lines were actually in use.

The cancellation, first detailed by Chalkbeat, replaces the citywide master fee with a more targeted plan: individual schools will now be expected to purchase internet access only for students who genuinely need it, at a cost of about $10 per student per month. As the Brooklyn Eagle reports, New York City had been paying that flat $3.5 million monthly fee to T-Mobile even when students weren't using the service, according to New York Focus.

The scale of the original spending was steep. Cellular service alone made up roughly $200 million, or nearly two-thirds, of the total projected $330 million cost over four years for the Chromebook initiative launched under Adams, per the Chalkbeat report. The Adams administration struck the no-bid deal to buy the 350,000 internet-enabled Chromebooks without approaching competing wireless providers for bids, according to New York Focus.

Warnings Went Unheeded Before the Deal Was Signed

Staff at the city's Office of Technology and Innovation had warned agency leaders before the contract was finalized that locking into a flat monthly fee with T-Mobile, without soliciting competitive offers from existing city vendors Verizon and AT&T, was wasteful. That internal skepticism, reported by New York Focus, didn't stop the Adams administration from fast-tracking the agreement anyway.

The arrangement traced back to a broader master agreement Adams and Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser brokered in February 2025, which designated T-Mobile as the city's default wireless carrier for five years, according to StateScoop. City Hall had promoted that carrier consolidation at the time as a cost-saving move for municipal operations overall.

Thousands of Chromebooks Never Made It to Students

The disconnect between spending and actual use has been stark. By late December 2025, the Department of Education had sent approximately 220,000 Chromebooks to 1,200 public schools, but principals had distributed only 71,000 of those devices to students, per the same New York Focus reporting, which noted the city comptroller had already recorded nearly $25 million paid for hardware before distribution stalled. Purchased Chromebooks remain locked in school cabinets and unused, per the Brooklyn Eagle.

City officials now say New York City can obtain internet service for the students who actually need it at a much lower cost, per the Eagle's reporting. The Department of Education has said the T-Mobile service duplicated existing resources at an unnecessary expense, according to Chalkbeat. Education advocates have separately pointed to T-Mobile's own national Project 10Million initiative, which already provides up to five years of free internet hotspots to K-12 students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, as evidence that paying millions monthly for duplicate LTE coverage wasn't necessary, per New York Focus.

Oversight Law and a Software Freeze Add to the Squeeze

In response to the earlier distribution failures, the City Council passed legislation sponsored by Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers requiring the Department of Education to issue biannual reports on student internet and device access across public school families — a bill the department had initially opposed during Council hearings in June 2025, according to New York Focus.

The contract cancellation lands alongside a separate headache for principals: a Department of Education freeze on educational software purchases, halted while officials develop new guidelines amid growing skepticism about the use of technology in the classroom, as Chalkbeat has reported. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels ordered that pause in July 2026 over artificial intelligence policy concerns, and principals have reported being unable to renew basic gradebooks and communication platforms just weeks before classes begin.

New York City principals now worry that necessary technology programs won't be in place when school officially opens on September 10, according to the Brooklyn Eagle. The T-Mobile shutoff and the software freeze are landing in the same narrow window, leaving school leaders to sort out both connectivity and classroom software questions with little runway before the first bell.

Part of a Broader Pattern of Contract Audits

Mamdani's move fits a pattern his administration has followed since taking office, reviewing and rescinding Adams-era Department of Education vendor agreements. In June, the mayor ended a Bed-Stuy day care deal tied to the prior administration over billing irregularities involving a $933,000 pre-K contract. Mamdani campaigned on overhauling municipal contracting to eliminate wasteful spending and oversight failures, and the T-Mobile cancellation marks his latest step in unwinding a no-bid arrangement that outside reviewers had flagged as costly well before it reached this point.