Consolidated Looking to Retire More Copper Phone Lines in New England
The company submitted requests to discontinue legacy service at another 61,000 locations.
WASHINGTON, August 19, 2025 – Consolidated Communications is looking to discontinue legacy voice service at another 61,000 locations in New England.
Consolidated said the affected customers could be transitioned to a voice over internet protocol (VoIP) service on its fiber network under the company’s Fidium brand. The company said the major wireless carriers also offer standalone voice service in all the affected areas, part of the requirements for federal regulators to greenlight the discontinuance.
Of the total affected locations, most are split between Maine and New Hampshire, with about 3,300 in Vermont.
The requests, submitted to the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, come just over a month after the company sought permission to shut down voice service at another 45,000 locations in the same three states.
“Consolidated is discontinuing the Legacy Voice Service as part of a technology transition because it has overbuilt its copper network with fiber optic cable,” wrote Michael J. Shultz, the company’s vice president of public policy. “Consolidated’s base of legacy voice subscribers will likely continue to decrease, making it uneconomic for Consolidated to continue managing and maintaining both a copper network and fiber network in the Affected Service Area.”
Consolidated said it would stop offering legacy voice service in the additional areas on Nov. 12, 2025, provided it gets the necessary approvals. The areas it previously requested permission to discontinue are set to turn off on Oct. 7, 2025.
In all cases the company said that it “has committed to working with its remaining legacy voice customers in the Affected Service Area to enable them to transition to Fidium, or an alternative voice provider, if they choose to do so.”
The Federal Communications Commission needs to approve telecom provider requests to discontinue service and rip up their old copper networks, an effort to make sure swathes of rural areas don’t lose access to essential services. That usually involves showing the incumbent will replace the service with something comparable and/or that another option is available.
Under FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the agency has made an effort to make the transition easier for providers. The agency temporarily waived a slate of requirements earlier this year, and unanimously voted last month to propose making many of those changes permanent and otherwise streamlining the rules.
“With today’s action, we are moving to free up billions of dollars for new networks,” Carr said at the agency’s July 24 meeting. “And we are doing all of that while keeping our eye on strong consumer protection measures – thus ensuring that no one will lose access to emergency services, like 911, as a result of the transition from aging networks to modern ones.”
ISPs for their part are eager to retire their legacy infrastructure as quickly as possible, as it no longer provides competitive broadband service and is costly to maintain – AT&T, which has been particularly aggressive with its copper retirement plan, has said it spends $6 billion annually on copper maintenance.
Consolidated was bought and taken private by Searchlight Capital in December. The company had nearly 400,000 broadband subscribers as of its last earning release in November.
Consolidated’s copper retirement requests haven’t drawn pushback in the FCC’s public comment system.
“The copper network is aging and has significant limits for broadband services, which are the future of communications services,” the company wrote.
Member discussion