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AT&T is suing to overturn a California regulation that requires the carrier to maintain old-school landlines for customers in certain areas of the state.
The carrier argues that it’s spending “$1 billion each year to maintain a century-old telephone network that almost no one uses.” Plus, it's "an easy mark for criminals—California has already suffered about 2,000 outages from copper thefts this year—and drains the power grid of over 100 million kilowatt-hours each year."
AT&T is suing officials with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, saying it can’t withdraw the copper-based landlines due to local regulations. The carrier is urging the court to rule that a March Federal Communications Commission order on retiring aging copper networks takes precedence over state rules.
“California’s conflicting state laws still stand in the way, and California has shown no signs of backing down. So judicial intervention is required,” the carrier wrote.
The lawsuit is bound to raise concerns that AT&T will remove landlines in rural and remote areas that struggle to receive reliable cell signals. Lawmakers and affected residents previously opposed the landline removal, citing concerns it would cut off communities from communication during a disaster or internet outage.
But as part of the lawsuit, AT&T is pledging to invest $19 billion in California through 2030 to expand its fiber network and bolster its wireless coverage to transition communities away from copper networks. Specifically, the fiber will be rolled out to “4 million+ additional households and businesses.” It also plans on deploying 1,200 new cell sites.
“We are committed to a thoughtful transition—all while ensuring no customer loses access to voice or 911 service,” the carrier adds. AT&T is preparing to retire most of the copper lines nationwide by 2029.
The CPUC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. However, in 2024, the regulator ruled that AT&T needed to continue supplying the landlines since it had been designated as a Carrier of Last Resort (COLR), legally requiring it to provide telephone services to anyone in its service territory who requests it. AT&T is also the largest COLR in the state.
In the decision, the CPUC noted it wasn’t preventing “AT&T from retiring copper facilities or from investing in fiber or other facilities/technologies to improve its network.” The carrier merely needed to provide telephone service to the affected areas using any technology, whether copper, fiber, cable, VoIP, or wireless.
But AT&T’s 30-page lawsuit noted that a CPUC division concluded in December that “we do not consider mobile service as a full substitute for a COLR,” noting that it can face coverage gaps and weak indoor signals, while traditional landlines are compatible with medical devices.
AT&T’s lawsuit adds that it “cannot invest its full resources to modernize its network while continuing to devote huge sums of money to keeping POTS [plain old telephone service] alive."
"In short, California’s still-unreformed COLR regime forces AT&T to continue to spend massive resources on a legacy network that is largely unused—resources that AT&T could use to expand and enhance its modern networks,” the carrier says. “This, in turn, reduces the competitive pressure AT&T otherwise could place on its many rivals that do not share its unique COLR burden, which also reduces their incentives to deploy broadband. There are no apparent winners here, except for bureaucracy.”