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The old phone lines won’t go quietly
AT&T wants to move on from the copper era, but California regulators are basically saying: not so fast, champ. The California Public Utilities Commission asked a court and the FCC to reject AT&T’s request to stop offering traditional copper-wire phone service to new customers in parts of the state.
Why this matters
This is not just nostalgia for landlines. California says AT&T still has carrier-of-last-resort obligations, meaning basic phone service has to remain available. The state argues AT&T hasn’t shown enough proof that every affected customer will have a solid replacement option if copper gets turned off.
AT&T, meanwhile, is trying to retire a legacy network it says costs about $1 billion a year to maintain in California. The company has been pouring money into fiber and wireless instead, including a $19 billion investment plan in the state through 2030. That’s the business logic: spend on the future, stop feeding the dinosaur.
The investor angle
The catch is that regulators don’t always care that your spreadsheet looks elegant. AT&T says the shutdown would touch about 184,000 residential customers and 15,000 business customers across parts of 360 wire centers, with the change set to begin in June 2027. So even if the long-term direction is clear, the path there is looking a little muddy.
Big picture: AT&T is trying to sprint out of the copper age, but California just handed it a bureaucratic speed bump. For investors, that means the network modernization story is still real — it’s just not moving on AT&T’s timetable.