AT&T has made it official that it plans to shut down copper networks everywhere except California by the end of 2029. This is not exactly news since the company has been quietly shutting down copper all over the country.

California is a special situation because the California Public Service Commission has never deregulated AT&T as a local telephone company and the state is going to make AT&T prove to it that customers will not be stranded when the copper comes down. Even California regulations have not stopped AT&T from quietly killing copper in California, as described in this blog I wrote early in 2024.

AT&T says it will offer an alternate technology to customers – either fiber or wireless. AT&T announced in early December that it plans to build fiber to 45 million additional passings by the end of 2029. That will certainly cover a lot of remaining DSL neighborhoods in cities and towns. But I have to wonder if AT&T is really planning on building fiber everywhere in cities. The concept of building ubiquitous fiber is counter to its historical construction plans of only building fiber in neighborhoods with the lowest cost per passing.

Consider my City of Asheville, NC. AT&T currently claims to have built fiber to pass 17,500 of 32,600 passings in the city. Is AT&T really going to build fiber to everybody else in order to replace DSL? If AT&T has already built fiber in the lowest-cost neighborhoods, it will cost a lot more per passing to cover the rest. 45 million passings is a huge number, and while it’s possible the company could build to this entire city, it would be a lot easier to build to neighborhoods with the best demographics and quietly disconnect copper DSL in the rest.

Replacing copper in rural areas is a much bigger challenge. AT&T says it will replace rural copper with FWA wireless technology – but that implies having rural towers in place that will reach everybody. FWA technology only covers roughly a two-mile circle around a tower, and in most counties, AT&T towers covers maybe a quarter of the geographic footprint. The company has no financial incentive to add new cell towers in sparely populated rural areas.

AT&T can’t tell the truth and say it will offer an alternative for only a portion of rural customers, but that’s the reality. AT&T can’t bring cellular broadband to places where cellphones barely work. The company is not about to say that it will offer an alternative for only some portion of copper customers, but that is what will ultimately happen.

I can’t imagine AT&T building in high-cost urban neighborhoods or sparely populated areas where construction makes no financial sense. Wall Street would crucify AT&T if it tried to bring a DSL replacement to everybody in the historical monopoly footprint. Even worse, doing so might entice regulators to treat AT&T like a monopoly again and make them really be the carrier of last resort.

One interesting part of the announcement is that the company says it has a new technology that will allow people to keep their old analog devices that worked on copper networks – things like medical monitors and burglar alarms. Telcos that upgrade copper technology face public grief over people who want to keep their old devices running. The technology AT&T is offering is not new and has been around for decades. The device is a emulation device that can create a TDM  bridge from an ethernet connection. Telcos have been offering this technology for decades to businesses that wanted to maintain old PBX and keysystem telephones. What’s new is that AT&T has condensed the technology to a small box that can be set next to a home router.