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?
At the July 24th FCC open meeting, Chairman Brendan Carr claimed that it was important to push through a series of deregulatory favors and it was based on the fact that one provider — AT&T, had only 5% of its customers using their copper networks and that the company was spending a whopping $6 billion on maintenance.
None of this is even remotely accurate and the FCC has done no audits of these “facts”.
This means that the FCC is in the process of creating regulations that not only favor AT&T et al, but this is to maneuver public policies to allow AT&T et al to just replace the wireline infrastructure, whether copper, coaxial or fiber, with FWA fixed wireless or satellite broadband as a substitution. The public storyline is that this will be fiber to the home, but history shows that is just not the case.
Let us examine the numbers presented.
1) Copper Access Lines: AT&T 2024 Annual Report “On December 31, 2024, we had 3.3 million network access lines in service and 127,000 DSL subscribers.”
“Copper decommissioning: While building the network of the future, we are actively working to exit our legacy copper network operations across the large majority of our wireline footprint. Our exit strategy includes migrating customers to fiber and wireless alternatives and working with policymakers to decommission our inefficient and less reliable copper network.”
2) 66 million total lines — If this 3.3 million lines represents 5%, then the total number of access lines would be 66 million.
3) 9.3 million fiber consumer wireline broadband customers.
“As of December 31, 2024, we had more than 9.3 million fiber consumer wireline broadband customers.”
4) 12.6 million lines — Add the fiber lines and the copper lines being ‘decommissioned .
5) Total of 53.4 Million Lines Missing — No matter how you count them none of the line accounting is even remotely correct.
Add the fiber optic lines, 9.3 million, and the copper lines being decommissioned, which appears to be 3.3 million, then there are 53 million lines that are missing, not in these calculations.
Other Hidden Lines.
- Other fiber lines not counted? Some of the missing lines could be that the fiber optic business lines or some other classification are not accounted for. The above 9.3 million fiber lines appear to say “consumer”, thus leaving our business or special access fiber lines.
- The copper VOIP -IP lines are not counted as a line.
One of the big cons has been to declare IP and VOIP services as an information service and when a basic copper wire carries these services, the actual line is no longer telecommunications — even if it is the identical wire that has been in place for 50 years carrying voice and data signals.
But there is no reason to believe that after the Carr deregulation gifts that they can also be shut off.
- We also found an interesting twist — “AIA” Broadband counts for an additional 4.6 million “lines”. AIA stands for AT&T Internet Air, which is a 5G fixed wireless service and is considered an alternative to the copper wires that are being shut off.
The Bottom-line is — How many copper wires are there in service, regardless of what services they are used for and how many are being turned off?
In our Application for Review, we believe the public has the right to know how many copper wires AT&T has and how many may be shut off, regardless of the shell game with reclassifying the line so that it can be removed from the line accounting.
And there are billions of dollars for infrastructure per state and all of this is part of AT&T’s state telecom utility in each of the 21 states they serve. Thus, all of these machinations are to manipulate the accounting to make more corporate profits vs delivering the best Universal Service possible in the Public Interest.
The Irregulators have asked to see the books and details of the number of lines before deregulation is put into effect by using this corrupted line accounting.
NOTE: We are on record about the issues with access line accounting and filed with the FCC over the last decade.
- REPORT Access Line Accounting has been Manipulated
- Bell Access Line Accounting Manipulation 1984–2018
- Description: Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, and their association, USTelecom, with the help of the FCC, have manipulated the basic accounting of access lines, and have removed or hidden 80% of all lines, including all Business Data Services, (special access) DSL, competitor lines, FiOS, U-Verse, all of the wires to the cell sites or WiFi hot spots, alarm circuits, and this has been done to reinforce a claim that the utility networks are unprofitable
And the $6 billion spent on the copper maintenance also requires investigations, especially when the FCC chairman claims it will be new money to be spent on the new networks.
- USTelecom Attempts to Kill Off Competition Using Access Line Accounting Deception.
- How Many ‘Special Access’ Lines Are There in America? ‘Zero’ or 600 Million?
The FCC and the phone companies, AT&T and Verizon, have been manipulating the accounting of access lines and it is being used to create harmful public policies.
All of these issues are front and center in the FCC’s Special Access and Broadband deployment (section 706) proceedings, to be presented Augusr 7th, 2025.
