AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos have stepped up their efforts to discontinue copper. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of rural homeowners and businesses are getting the notice that their copper will be cut dead, usually within 90 days.

Here is rural Western North Carolina, and around the country, cutting copper is suddenly a big local issue. The telcos have been telling regulators for a decade that this day was coming, but that knowledge never filtered down to the public. The process of cutting copper got a big boost over the last year when the FCC simplified the disconnection paperwork for telcos and made it easier for telcos to accelerate the process.

AT&T told stockholders a year ago that it intended to decommission all copper by the end of 2029. Last month, the company told stockholders it now wants to accelerate and beat that date. Verizon has quietly been killing copper for the last five years, and the company most recently requested permission to eliminate copper in nine states: Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia – in areas that were formally part of Frontier. The company was likely surprised when the FCC put that request on hold pending more questions. The FCC is siding with the big telcos and recently decided to try to overturn the delays on decommissioning copper put in place by the California Public Utilities Commission.

Unfortunately, the new FCC rules place the entire burden of disputing the loss of copper on the customer. A customer has the right to seek a delay in copper decommissioning if they are going to lose access to 911 and if they have no alternative way to buy voice. Following is a description of some of the major hoops a customer would have to jump through to delay the process of losing copper, and as you will see, the deck is fully stacked against the public.

By FCC rule, a customer has only fifteen days to officially protest or comment after the FCC approves a given notice of discontinuance. I know what I’m going to say next sounds preposterous, but for a customer to realistically know that copper is going to be cut, they would need to keep track of what’s being ordered at the FCC to even know that a docket has been issued for their local area, and then quickly file comments if the customer doesn’t want to lose copper. There are practically no customers in the country ready or able to do this.

The process of tracking where copper will be discontinued is a challenge even for those who understand the FCC process. The FCC publishes a daily list of formal actions in the Daily Digest. Copper decommissioning orders are mixed in with other orders and are labeled something like, “Discontinue Domestic Legacy Voice Service as Part of a Technology Transition”. It’s routinely challenging to understand the specific geography the FCC orders are covering. But if a customer could figure this out, the next step would be to find the applicable proceeding related to the discontinuance docket at this FCC site. If a customer can figure out the specific docket that applies to them, a customer can file online comments, where they can describe the problems that will be caused if they lose their copper. As you might imagine, very few consumers have made it through this process.

One of the key elements to delay losing copper is that the customer must have no alternative service. That could mean having a broadband alternative that would allow for VoIP. It might mean having access to cellular service. Carriers and the FCC are going to rely on the FCC broadband and cellular coverage maps. I’ve been writing blogs for years describing how inaccurate these maps are, particularly in rural areas. The cellular coverage maps are particularly egregious and often greatly exaggerate actual coverage. But to win the argument for a delay, a customer has to somehow show there is no actual alternative, and we all know how hard it is to prove a negative.

Some customers may have additional time to act beyond the statutory time frame. Verizon, for the recently acquired Frontier properties, has told customers that they won’t cut them off if there is no alternative to reach 911. However, there is no specific mechanism for customers to make this claim to Verizon. A customer could try to directly convince them of this, while a better place would be to go through the FCC docket system.

Unfortunately, I wish I had something more positive to tell folks about losing copper. Probably the best outcome a customer can hope for is to delay losing copper for a while. But within a few years, big telco copper is going to be gone, and the FCC will close all of the copper dockets.