AT&T is seeking to stop repairing damaged sections of its copper telephone lines. In a filing submitted recently, the telecom company asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to discontinue service on affected portions rather than restore them.
The exhaustive 500-page filing details more than 500 outages in May alone. AT&T attributed the outages to theft and equipment failures, arguing that repairs cost more than they are worth.
“AT&T does not intend to restore service to the impacted areas, because comparable substitute service is available to all impacted customers,” wrote AT&T attorney Brett Farley in the filing.
The cost of keeping old tech alive
It all comes down to money. Patching up old lines for a few scattered customers is not exactly economical, and most of the copper is getting scrapped soon, regardless, as part of the company’s broader network upgrade. As for who’s to blame, AT&T waves that off. At the end of the day, they are factors described as “beyond AT&T’s control.”
AT&T’s push to abandon copper lines isn’t a one-off thing. The company has been trying to retire its legacy copper infrastructure for a while now. In California, the company wants to exit rules that obligate it to maintain basic landline service. It has sued the state over a separate rule that forces it to run new copper lines to customers who request them.
Copper theft remains a big chunk of the problem. In California alone, there were more than 4,300 theft-related incidents in 2025, with roughly another 2,000 or so reported this year.
Critics, however, are not convinced about AT&T’s broader argument that nobody uses landlines anymore. In rural areas, where cell service is weak or nonexistent, a copper line is sometimes the only reliable phone connection.
There is one bit of good news on the theft front, at least. In Louisville, Kentucky, theft dropped sharply once the company started working with the local police, offering a potential model for addressing one piece of the larger challenge.
Sources: FCC, AT&T, Broadband Breakfast, Ars Technica, California CPUC, AT&T (Theft Reward)