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 »
When designing solutions which replace copper infrastructure for a living, we continuously see this question arise; “Can wireless connectivity really be trusted with a life safety application?”, which is a fair question. The topic of pots replacement has become increasingly important as carriers retire copper infrastructure, state and local regulators have started pushing back on
Is Wireless a Reliable POTS Replacement for Life-Safety Lines? 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 »
Ask any enterprise IT or facilities team what matters most in a POTS replacement rollout, and speed is usually the first answer. How quickly can lines be swapped. How fast can a site go live. Vendors compete on install timelines because it is the easiest thing to put a number on. But install speed only
The Hidden Admin Tax of Site-by-Site Ordering (And How Unified Deployment Eliminates It) 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
No sector is more exposed to copper retirement than energy and utilities, and few are less prepared for it. A single electric, gas, or water utility can operate analog lines to thousands of locations: substations, pump stations, lift stations, well sites, storage tanks, regulator stations, and remote alarm points scattered across an entire service territory.
POTS Replacement for Energy and Utilities: What Operators Need to Know Read More »
