AT&T is telling Illinois landline customers to get ready — the copper phone line is being retired.
Customers started getting the notice in November. It’s the old-school, wall-jack landline — the one that’s been sitting in kitchens, basements, and small-town offices forever — and AT&T says it’s winding it down in Illinois.
The reason is blunt. An AT&T official said traditional landline use is down 96% since 2014.
What replaces it won’t be copper. AT&T says customers will be moved to AT&T Phone Advanced (APA), which is a digital phone service that runs over AT&T’s cellular network or a broadband connection.
That swap is exactly what has consumer advocates nervous.
“For many customers, the traditional landline has served as the most reliable and affordable connection to family and friends as well as necessities such as 911, medical monitoring services, security systems,” Jim Chilsen with the Illinois Citizens Utility Board said.
And then the part people actually worry about when the lights go out:
“The problem with internet-based phone options is that they don’t work in a power outage; they don’t work if your internet goes out,” Chilsen said. “So there are a lot of concerns with these other options of phone service.”
Illinois still has a lot of these lines hanging around. Chilsen said the state had around 550,000 landlines as of June last year, and many were with AT&T. He also flagged rural areas as the pressure point — places where you can’t just shrug and “use the internet” because it’s not really there.
Researchers, he said, found more than a quarter of Illinois residents don’t have access to high speed internet.
“We have a big concern that this could impact consumers in rural areas,” Chilsen said. “There are a lot of consumers who like the reliability, and they like the affordability of plain old telephone service.”
AT&T’s timeline is phased. The company says landlines will be discontinued in stages, and not everyone will lose their traditional service in 2027. The company also said customers won’t be left without voice or 911 service.
Bigger picture, the AT&T official said the company plans to end copper-based services across most of its footprint by the end of 2029.
This is the part that’s easy to miss until it hits: a lot of people don’t use a landline until the one time they really need it.
Source: KWQC