FCC Gives Approval for an AT&T ‘Shut the Copper’, Wireless-Bait-and-Switch.

Bruce Kushnick
5 min readDec 24, 2024

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Excerpt: AT&T’s New Innovative Wireless Replacement Terms & Conditions, 2024.

Bloomberg Headline: say it all:

“AT&T Can Substitute Wireless Home Phone for Copper, FCC Says…Phone giant is looking to retire older, costlier landlines.”

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We just started to write about this plan as it was also touted at a December investor’s meeting.

Part 1: AT&T Screams “Fiber” and yet America Gets Crap Wireless. It’s the Next Corporate Bait and Switch Using Manipulated Accounting

In the previous article we detailed that AT&T is planning “shutting the copper” wires that remain in 21 states and replace it with a seriously flawed wireless service, which includes a new ‘innovative’ wireless tech. As we will discuss, it is not new, it is not innovative and it may not work for specific applications as the above quote lays out.

And according to the latest news, the press are reporting that the FCC has agreed to allow AT&T to replace the copper wires in a few areas in Oklahoma, based on a court case.

How Embarrassing; 2014 — A decade ago.

Besides AT&T taking no responsibility about the product, based on this and other portions of the terms — we are struck by the deja vu factor that must be considered. This is from Telecompetitor in February 2014. — a decade ago.

AT&T’s Original Wireless-Copper Wire, Voice Service Replacements February 28, 2014

“AT&T aims to replace traditional landline voice service with a combination of LTE and U-verse in TDM-to-IP transition trials it wants to conduct in rural Carbon Hill, Ala. and in suburban Miami. The company filed its proposal with the FCC yesterday and said it expects the plan to be approved by the commission in May, with trials starting in late 2014 or early 2015 and running into part of 2017.

And this was the bottom line — the wireless stuff never worked as advertised and AT&T told the FCC that it was working to fix the issues shortly in 2014.

“…how AT&T will handle customers that currently rely on a traditional landline connection to support their alarm systems, medical alerts and credit card processing devices. An AT&T spokesman said the company is “currently developing enhancements that will provide all of these applications.” He added that the company is “committed to supporting these applications.”

In 2024, all of the copper wires are now a decade older; some were put in during the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and by the 70s, most of the locations were served in every US nook and cranny.

But, for decade after decade, what is now AT&T kept telling everyone they would be replacing with fiber optics. They had a better chance of waiting for Godot, the infamous no-show.

And yet, 2024, we now hear that they have ‘new innovative tech to shut off working phone lines and replace them with wireless equipment. But if AT&T was confident about it — how can they have this caveat from the current Terms and Conditions related to alarm systems and medical monitoring with potential life threatening outcomes if the equipment doesn’t work

But, AT&T writes, as shown in the opening quote: “AT&T makes no warranty that AT&T Phone Service is appropriate for or capable of use with monitored burglar or fire alarms or medical monitoring systems or devices. Use of such systems is at your own risk.”

This is a serious problem because AT&T Executives claim this does alarm and medical monitoring, as discussed at a December Investor meeting.

““It works just like a traditional landline phone, and it works with many of the services that our POTS landline customers are used to using: Think fax machines, medical monitoring devices, alarm systems, even elevators,”

Before we discuss the tech and the implications of doing this shut off, we posted this discussion on how the accounting of copper lines has been manipulated, as shown in the opening chart.

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AT&T has decided to hide just how many copper wires there are left

While AT&T is making claims it will have 50 million lines by 2029,

in December 2024 AT&T only has 9 million fiber lines out of 80 million locations., about 11%.

But AT&T told investors that there are only 5% of the current lines being used that are copper. But it is the slight-of-hand with the definition that is problematic.

AT&T states:

“Only 5% of our residential customers are still using copper voice technology,”

“Residential”, “voice” and “copper” — hide every other line that is data or even business lines, and we assume these lines are also going to be shut off, like DSL, or U-verse, or VoIP lines — i.e., AT&T has intentionally not called attention that the company never did the upgrades of the 21 state telecom utilities it controls, and these other lines can be ‘shut off’,

The Chart above shows the number of ‘connections’ for AT&T as of December 2nd `quarter, 2024. If ATT only has 8.798 million lines of fiber, then it would seem that the 1.468 million ‘consumer switched lines are the 5%, — and the 167,000 DSL lines, the 2.4 million Consumer VoIP lines, the other broadband lines — about 6–7 million not to mention all of the business lines and data lines not in the ATT financials are also copper and up for replacement with crap wireless.

We estimate that 13–21 million other copper lines are in play but hidden. This would mean that 5% is deceptive, and that 30%-65% or more are missing. 8–15 times more lines in service than just residential, voice copper lines.

This next chart from the FCC Marketplace report throws support for the previous analysis showing a great deal more AT&T copper lines exist

This chart shows that there were 90 million voice telephone service — wired lines in service, and that the ILEC’s, which are the state telecommunications utilities — had 17.8 million lines, and 6.4 million VOIP lines. AT&T has 21 states and would have almost 1/2 of the 18 million (rounded) lines — as well as 1/2 o the VOIP lines, which for u-verse would be copper. — which could mean AT&T has about 12 million copper lines at least, as this doesn’t count the data lines.

The non-ILEC would be the cable companies’ Digital Voice service. Weren’t we told there are no more wired phonelines in America?

Next Up: Another Wireless-Copper-Wire-Bait and Switch of Massive Proportions.

Next Part: The AT&T ‘Advanced’ tech is not new, or innovative, and this is a bait and switch to push a seriously flawed wireless product that AT&T is claiming will be used for the majority of wireline customers.

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Bruce Kushnick
Bruce Kushnick

Written by Bruce Kushnick

New Networks Institute,Executive Director, & Founding Member, IRREGULATORS; Telecom analyst for 40 years, and I have been playing the piano for 65 years.

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