Copper theft is undermining telecom infrastructure and service reliability
Copper theft is a growing and costly threat to organizations that rely on legacy telecom infrastructure, making de-risking your network a critical priority. When thieves recently removed nearly 900 feet of copper cable in the Forest Lake neighborhood in Houston earlier this year, service was not restored. The incumbent carrier informed the customer that they would have to migrate to a different solution. Situations like these reveal a harsh reality: copper networks have become both a liability and an afterthought for major telecommunications companies.
The Hidden Copper Risk No One Talks About
Even if your copper lines are not stolen, simply using copper lines exposes you to unnecessary risk:
- Copper circuits break, and repairs may be delayed or denied
- Carriers are quietly retiring copper and prioritizing other investments, so your lines might disappear from underneath you, without being stolen
- Aging infrastructure introduces reliability problems that are out of your control, and the people that know how to resolve those problems are aging-out of their jobs
When copper becomes the weakest link in your network, downtime becomes inevitable.
A Proactive Path Forward
Modernizing your connectivity should not wait for an outage or theft event. Organizations are reducing risk by transitioning to a secure, modern wireless backhaul.
- No copper for thieves to target
- No dependency on delayed telco repairs
- Improved reliability and performance
- A scalable platform for future growth
Wireless backhaul replaces vulnerable copper with a protected digital connection that carriers cannot quietly sunset.
Real Customers, Real Transformation
Organizations that rely on always-on connectivity choose MarketSpark to protect their critical operations.
- Regional Hospital System: Repeated copper failures began affecting clinical operations. By switching to wireless backhaul, the organization achieved 99.99 percent uptime in the first year and eliminated emergency outage work orders.
- School District: Copper theft caused more than $250,000 in downtime and remediation costs. Wireless backhaul now supports connectivity across dozens of campuses with no physical lines left to steal.
- National Bank: Branch and ATM connectivity relied on aging copper that frequently failed and was expensive to maintain. Wireless backhauls eliminated the need for copper and improved operational continuity in high-risk, high-traffic markets.
These organizations did not wait for the next outage. They removed the risk entirely with MarketSpark.
Take the Copper Risk Out of Your Network
Copper once powered the world’s connections, but today it threatens operational continuity, increases downtime exposure, and forces costly transitions on the carrier’s schedule. Modernizing now keeps your organization connected and protected, regardless of what happens to the legacy copper grid.
No copper. No problem. Let’s de-risk and modernize your network before risk becomes reality.