$5.85 Billion Dollar Discrepancy in FCC Chairman Carr’s New Investments when the Copper is Shut Off.

YOU DECIDE Is there really $6 billion in new investment when the AT&T copper networks are shut off vs $150 million, (with a per-line annual cost of $45-$50 dollars?) Is there really 50+ million access lines, mostly copper, missing in the accounting of lines?

In 2017, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai claimed that shutting off the copper wired networks would generate new investment funds. The quote above is from the FCC’s 2017 Proceeding details evidence that shows that the copper wires cost only $45-$50 a year per line to maintain.

FROM: Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment, WC Docket №17–84, Released: November 29, 2017

But here’s the rub:

Brendan Carr, currently the Chairman of the FCC, had first been a staffer for Ajit Pai, then FCC General Counsel and in 2017 became a commissioner.

In 2025, in the same proceeding 8 years later, and in other related proceedings, FCC Chairman Carr is claiming that one carrier (AT&T) has less than 5% of customers still using these legacy copper wires and that it cost $6 billion annually to maintain.

Carr stated this in the July Open FCC Meeting, and he contends that this money will be used once these copper lines are shut off to build out for the new broadband networks

Copper Access lines only cost $45-$50 to maintain a year and shutting them off is not $6 billion in new potential money for investments, but only about $150 million — It is chump change.

That’s right; chump change.

Let us give some basic facts:

1) AT&T claims there are 3.3 million legacy copper lines in the 2024 Annual Report

2) According to the FCC, this represented 5% of the AT&T lines.

3) 66 million lines is the total lines, based on using 3.3 million lines representing 5%.

4) AT&T claimed 9.3 million fiber to the premises lines in service at the end of 2024.

5) 53.4 million lines, which are most likely copper wires, are missing from the details.

§ 50 Million Copper Access Lines Appear to be Missing from the FCC’s Analysis. Who Does It Benefit? Why It Matters? Where’s the Audits?

Note: There are various caveats to these numbers, like only counting the ‘consumer’ lines, or lines for voice service vs VoIP or U-verse phone service.

PART 2:

6) If there are 3.3 million copper lines that are being shut off.

7) We use and average of $45-$50 dollars per line per year, which is quoted by the FCC in 2017.

8) This means that the total money that will be garnered for new investment is ==3.3 million times $45–50 dollars.

9) We will use the average rounded of $150 million,

10) $5.85 billion dollars appears to be in question — Annually.

Conclusion: It appears that $5.85 billion dollars is a misrepresentation of the actual expenses as told by the FCC’s own statements in 2017.

Therefore, no deregulatory gifts should have been put into a series of orders as there is no serious new investment if the copper wires are shut off,

And worse, there has been no available data or analysis to support these claims.

PART 3:

• The 2017 proceeding 17–84, quoted above, is the exact same proceeding in 2025
• In 2017, Brendan Carr was a FCC Commissioner and in 2025 he is the Chairman
• This means Chairman Carr must have known the actual expenses per line,
• Brendan Carr had obligations to request the actual facts from AT&T to prove that the 5% number of remaining copper lines in use was real or that the $6 billion in maintenance was correct — as it directly contradicts the previous accounting of expenses.

And this means that this deceptive set of numbers were used to create a series of deregulatory gifts that are illegitimate as public policies are supposed to be based on material facts that can be verified.

PART 4: Deceptive, as it is not naming names

We need to make clear that in 2017, Ajit Pai claimed that the shut off of the copper would lead to the companies using the excess monies for IP services replacing the legacy “TDM” networks and that fiber to the home would be the next step:

This is what Chairman Pai wore in 2017

“And expediting the copper retirement process could contribute to 26.7 million incremental premises being passed by fiber over a five-year period. Requiring that incumbent LECs forego these potential savings results in opportunity costs and creates a disincentive to broadband investment.”

“Will result in a copper retirement, which is defined for purposes of Part 51 Subpart D as: (1) the removal or disabling of copper loops, subloops, or the feeder portion of such loops or subloops; or (2) the replacement of such loops with fiber-to-the-home loops or fiber-to-the-curb loops, as those terms are defined in §51.319(a)(3).”

The telecom-wonk talk details that various parts of the copper networks are being replaced for fiber to the home — a fiber optic wire to the residential location or to the curb. Meaning outside the residence to be conntect to another wire to the home.

Conversely, this is what Carr wrote in a series of orders in March 2025. Notice that there are high-speed networks and there is no mention of fiber optic services to the home.

“Outdated FCC rules have left Americans sitting in the slow lane for far too long,…Those FCC rules have forced providers to pour resources into maintaining aging and expensive copper line networks instead of investing in the modern, high-speed infrastructure that Americans want and deserve. We are doing something about that today. We are streamlining the process for retiring decades-old copper networks so that providers can transition consumers and their resources to new, high-speed networks on a faster timeline. We do so by clearing some of the regulatory underbrush that needlessly delays the retirement of those copper networks.”

“There is much more work ahead for the FCC, and our goal through additional actions is to ultimately free up billions of dollars for new networks that otherwise would have been diverted into costly and outdated copper lines. This initial set of actions gets things moving in the right direction and creates the right incentives for providers to invest and build new networks in communities across the country.”

Moreover, the plan is NOT to replace the copper wires with fiber to the home, but a substitute crap wireless where AT&T is claiming no responsibility if it works as a substitute,

But it gets worse when we find that Chairman Carr, claims that there is only 5% of AT&T’s customers are still using these copper lines and yet, after counting the number of fiber lines to the home, there is over 50 million lines that are unaccounted for.

SUBPLOT: We believe that this new Carr deregulation is really a plan to not hold AT&T accounting for fiber to the home, but these 50 million lines could also be thrown under the bus and shut off for a crap wireless solution.

And with the strip mining of the laws and obligations, this bait and switch action can be done without little or no proper notification of the customers.

The Removal of Our Due Process; No Comment Period.

In March 2025 the FCC pushed through a collection of deregulatory actions using the wireline bureau with no comment period or full commission review —

In fact, these actions all appear to be an extension of the FCC orders and rulemakings in 2017 and 2018.

We filed an application for full review, which is still pending at this time.

We wrote:

IRREGULATORS Request Full Review of the FCC Deregulation Order — and Debate Us.

“On March 20, 2025, the FCC issued an Order and Clarification under WC Docket №17–84 and GN Docket №13–5, accelerating the retirement of legacy copper infrastructure and promoting wireless alternatives.

“This action was done by the wireline bureau as an order where the FCC has removed the public’s right to comment, or a review by all of the commissioners.

“This is one of the opening shots of Delete, Delete Delete, where Chairman Carr plans to take a large eraser and wipe away more of the public’s rights, protections and remove basic oversight of all communications — wireline, wireless, broadband, internet, cable TV, satellite, and instead go after social media companies or companies who care about Digital Equity and Inclusion, DEI.”

We will be coming back to this story but the punchline is:

Almost every number being used by Brendan Carr in these proceedings show a massive negligence on the part of the FCC to fact check information supplied by the companies; Worse, it appears that the basic amount of money being spent on maintaining the existing copper networks was manipulated, especially in light of the previous 2017 statements by the FCC in 2017 — when Carr was Commissioner.

• 5% of lines appears to be missing — 50 million lines that may be copper — and therefore are prime targets for crap wireless replaements.
• $6 billion dollars of expenses to maintain the copper wires is really, only about $150 million, about 3%-5% of the new total.

And, in the end, all of this bad data is being used to create illegitimate orders without public comments while giving the companies new deregularoy gifts.

We need to see all of the details, all of the data, don’t you?