AT&T Approved to Discontinue Service at More Than 30% of Copper Footprint This Year

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2026 – AT&T has federal approval to start retiring more than 30 percent of its copper footprint, excluding California, the company said Monday.

On Dec. 1, 2025, the carrier submitted to the Federal Communications Commission an application to discontinue service at wire centers currently serving about 90,000 customers across 18 states. The application was eligible for streamlined treatment and thus was automatically granted Monday, 31 days after the FCC public notice on the application was published.

The carrier has been outspoken about its copper retirement efforts, with plans to retire the large majority of its copper outside of California by the end of 2029. Telecoms are eager to turn off their copper networks, which are expensive to maintain and don’t provide competitive broadband speeds. AT&T has said it spends $6 billion annually on maintaining its roughly 4,600 copper wire centers. 

New landline replacement offered

To affected customers, AT&T is offering its new landline replacement service that runs on its broadband networks, or simply a mobile line. They were notified in November 2025 that starting Nov. 15, 2026, the copper landline service could be discontinued. The company had already received FCC approval to discontinue a smaller number of additional wire centers.

“The FCC’s approval of our application to discontinue copper-based services in an additional 25% of our wire centers is an important milestone as we continue to modernize our network and bring the benefits of newer technologies, like AT&T Phone – Advanced and wireless, to our customers,” Rhonda Johnson, AT&T’s EVP of federal regulatory relations, said in a statement. “We appreciate the FCC’s continued recognition of the importance of modernizing communications infrastructure and remain committed to supporting our customers every step of the way.”

While California has carrier of last resort laws that make it more difficult to decommission infrastructure, a bid to ensure rural areas aren’t left without service, the FCC is looking to ease providers’ technology transitions.

The agency in March made temporary changes to its copper retirement rules aimed at making it easier to get the streamlined application treatment AT&T received and otherwise make the process faster for providers. The agency is considering making them permanent.

Verizon has used the new waivers to speed up a discontinuance application – companies have to show the FCC there exists an adequate replacement for their retired service in order for applications to be processed quickly – but AT&T rested on its landline replacement service, which the agency has also found to be adequate.

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge and telecom union Communications Workers of America has opposed the FCC’s plan to ease copper retirement, saying in September they feared wireless service would be less reliable for rural residents.

“A wireless signal is a shared medium, and only a certain number of devices can  connect to a single antenna before congestion begins to degrade a service,” they wrote. “This limitation is particularly critical during emergencies, when a larger than usual number of users attempt to use a mobile network.”

On Monday, Trusty said aiding copper retirement a security concern

FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty said in a Monday speech that aiding copper retirement was also partly a cybersecurity concern, as old copper networks are vulnerable to theft or hacking. Last week AT&T told the agency it was experiencing lengthy outages in Los Angeles because of theft motivated by rising copper prices.

AT&T’s CEO John Stankey said last month that the company had a “very deliberate plan” for getting the rest of its copper wire centers through the retirement process.

“Some of it requires a little bit of development,” he said. “We’ve got to finish building fiber to migrate some customers in places. We have to have some catch products in place in areas where we’re not building fiber.”

In terms of broadband, AT&T is planning to get fiber to more than 60 million locations by the end of 2030. In parts of its footprint where it’s going to be too expensive to lay fiber, or where planned builds haven’t happened yet, the company is using its fixed wireless service to retain broadband customers.

Wire centers affected by AT&T’s approved application are in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Correction: A previous verison of this story said AT&T planned to retire all of its copper outside California by the end of 2029. The company plans to retire "the large majority," but not all, of its footprint outside California by the end of 2029.