AT&T intends to retire the bulk of its wired (not fiber) infrastructure within five years to end the financial burden of operating parallel networks. Illinois is the first state to be targeted, following state legislation that removed the “carrier of last resort” obligation, allowing the company to notify residents that traditional landline service will be discontinued in March 2027.
The company made its decision based on several factors, including that copper degrades over time, requires constant maintenance, and often makes it more costly to repair the infrastructure than customers actually pay for service. With the FCC now permitting carriers to retire these aging networks, AT&T is shifting its capital investment almost entirely toward fiber and wireless technologies. Consequently, customers currently relying on copper lines will be forced to transition, either moving to fiber where available or adopting fixed wireless cellular solutions in areas where cable upgrades are not planned.
While Illinois is serving as the pilot for this transition, the initiative is effectively nationwide and will eventually impact every state within AT&T’s 21-state operating footprint. California is currently the most contentious battleground for this shift, where AT&T is aggressively lobbying state regulators and lawmakers to remove its “carrier of last resort” obligations. Unlike in Illinois, where the company successfully secured legislative permission to end traditional service, California officials have pushed back, rejecting AT&T’s initial application to withdraw landline service and forcing the company to continue maintaining the copper network. At the same time, the state legislature is debating a new bill that would override the regulators and allow the disconnects to proceed.
In many other regions, specifically across the South and Midwest, including Texas, Florida, and Alabama, state legislatures deregulated the telecommunications market years ago, effectively giving AT&T the green light to retire these services with far less public friction than is being seen in Illinois or California.
At the national level, the FCC recently granted AT&T permission to discontinue legacy copper services in roughly 500 wire centers across the country. This federal approval overrides many local concerns and means that if a neighborhood is served by one of these wire centers, customers will face the same forced migration to fiber or wireless options that Illinois residents are experiencing now.