California has been the last major holdout in the copper transition. While other states let retirement proceed, California’s carrier of last resort rules forced AT&T to keep offering copper service. The state pushed back hard on efforts to shut it down. That brake is now loosening. On October 30, 2026, the FCC said its chairman
FCC Moves to Preempt California Copper Rules Read More »
In a recent update on its copper retirement, AT&T offered striking evidence for why the old network is on its way out. Following last year’s California wildfires, the company said it restored wireless coverage in most affected areas within three days. However, restoring copper service took several months. More broadly, AT&T reported that wireless repairs
Wildfires, Copper, and Wireless POTS Replacement Read More »
As carriers move customers off copper and onto wireless replacements, the reliability of those replacements has become a question of public concern. In October 2026, federal lawmakers sent formal letters to Verizon asking the company on whether its wireless copper replacement is dependable enough for the people and systems that rely on it. They also
Copper is going dark faster than most migration plans assume. The U.S. lost 3.2 million traditional landlines this past year, a 17.6% drop, according to the FCC’s Voice Telephone Services report. Businesses still hold 8.6 million of the 15 million lines that remain, and many are affected by POTS line retirement. Many of those lines
POTS Line Retirements in 2026: What the Data Says Read More »
If your organization still runs voice or POTS lines from Lumen, the company that sells them has told the market, in plain language, that it is getting out of the business. What it has not told you is when. That combination, a clear intent to exit and a deliberate refusal to commit to a timeline,
Lumen Says Voice Is Not Its Future: What Enterprise Lumen Customers Should Do Now Read More »
Most coverage of copper retirement focuses on the big announcements, a carrier files to shut down service in a dozen states, a consumer group objects, a headline follows. The mechanism that actually decides how fast copper disappears gets far less attention, and it is the part enterprises most need to understand. Increasingly, copper discontinuance applications
How the FCC’s Auto-Grant Process Is Quietly Accelerating Copper Retirement Read More »
For most of the past year, copper retirement has been told as an AT&T story, and increasingly as an AT&T versus California story. That framing is now out of date. As of August 2026, the country’s major incumbent carriers are filing to discontinue legacy copper service across dozens of states at the same time, covering
For years, enterprises with operations in certain states could quietly count on one thing: state regulators would slow the copper shutdown even as federal policy accelerated it. Carrier of last resort rules, right of way requirements, and state approval processes acted as a brake on how fast the legacy network could actually disappear. In the
What Enterprises Must Do Now On March 5, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission fundamentally changed the trajectory of U.S. telecom infrastructure. What had long been a gradual transition away from copper networks is now accelerating rapidly. For enterprise organizations, this isn’t just a regulatory update. It’s an operational and compliance risk already unfolding. What the
FCC Copper Retirement Order 2026 Read More »
Why CRE can’t treat copper retirement like “just a phone issue.” For decades, the Commercial Real Estate (CRE) industry leaned on copper POTS lines as the quiet utility behind life-safety and building-critical systems: fire panels dialing a central station, elevator emergency phones, burglar alarms, gate call-boxes, and “one last analog line” for a legacy control
Copper Retirement and Its Impact on Commercial Real Estate Read More »
