AT&T accelerates the end of a network that's losing customers

25 Oct 2026, 11:07 · The Fresno Bee

AT&T is speeding up its plan to phase out long-standing services that customers keep canceling as demand for newer alternatives grows.

Several of these alternatives have seen strong customer growth in the third quarter of this year. According to AT&T’s latest earnings report, the carrier attracted 379,000 postpaid phone customers during the quarter.

It also added 416,000 AT&T Fiber customers, up 44.4% year over year, and 280,000 new Internet Air (its fixed wireless internet service) customers, a 3.7% increase from the same period in 2025.

On an earnings call on Oct. 21, AT&T CEO John Stankey said that the company has been focused on “removing friction for consumers by constructing plans built around simplicity, transparent value, and convergence.”

He said that converged wireless and internet accounts have especially been “driving strong financial results.”

AT&T speeds up plans to shut down copper network

As AT&T focuses on enhancing its offerings, it is ramping up its efforts to retire its old copper network as its legacy services continue to face significant customer losses.

According to a recent Light Reading report, only 1% of AT&T customers still use the carrier’s legacy copper-based voice services, down from 5% in December 2024.

“As anticipated, we are continuing to see a decline in the number of customers that are using our legacy services,” said Susan Johnson, AT&T’s senior executive vice president, in an interview with Light Reading.

“That (number) is continuing to descale and customers are leaving (copper-based services) for many reasons, but preeminent among them is it’s no longer meeting their needs for speeds and reliability,” she continued.

In 2024, AT&T unveiled plans to shut down most of its copper network by 2030 and to push customers affected by the change to newer wireless or fiber-based services. It has already submitted applications this year to retire its legacy copper landline network in parts of California.

AT&T is accelerating these efforts and has so far shuttered 100 of its outdated wire centers, which are local facilities housing equipment that connects customers’ copper telephone lines to the carrier’s network.

The carrier has decommissioned copper-based services in over 500 communities covering 1.3 million locations across 18 states. AT&T expects to complete this shutdown process in an additional 1,500 communities over the next year.

In California specifically, the Federal Communications Commission said the carrier can begin powering down about 360 of its 615 wire centers in the state on or after June 1, 2027.

“Hitting this first 100 wire centers with no customers left is important for us to prove out that this is working for our customers, and now we are leaning into further scale,” said Johnson.

With respect to customer migrations, “you’re going to see scale pretty materially from here on out,” she added.

AT&T is accelerating this process at a time when its legacy service revenues are declining. AT&T Chief Financial Officer Pascal Desroches revealed on the company’s Oct. 21 earnings call that the carrier’s service revenues in its legacy segment declined 25% year-over-year in the third quarter.

Its legacy EBITDA ( earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) also dipped by roughly 27%.

“Copper retirement remains an integral part of our overall cost transformation, and we remain on pace to achieve our target of $4 billion in annual consolidated cost savings by the end of 2028,” said Desroches.

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How AT&T plans to make copper network transition easier for customers

To lessen the blow of the change for customers, especially those concerned about its impact on their access to emergency services, AT&T developed AT&T Phone-Advanced in 2024.

It is an alternative to plain old telephone service (POTS) that customers can sign up for, and it supports all legacy devices through either wireless or fiber networks. It also supports features such as E911, fax, Caller ID, medical devices, and alarm systems.

As it rolls out this transition, AT&T is first focusing on shuttering its copper network in locations that have adequate wireless coverage. It will then focus on areas where it has built fiber.

Johnson said AT&T is carefully testing signal strength in those wireless areas to ensure the network can support AT&T Phone-Advanced.

AT&T’s copper phaseout reflects a wider telecom shift

AT&T isn’t the only wireless carrier that is discontinuing its copper network.

In August, Verizon submitted an application to the FCC seeking approval to shut down its traditional copper landline phone service in portions of nine states. The change would affect about 277,000 residential and business legacy voice lines.

The carrier said it is retiring this service because the costs of maintaining it are “enormous,” with the company spending billions of dollars annually.

“Copper infrastructure is too slow to meet modern needs, many decades old, costly to maintain, and vulnerable to damage and theft,” said Verizon in the filing.

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Verizon has faced backlash from customers over the proposed change, and the FCC paused approval of the carrier’s proposal in September to allow additional time for review.

Cost savings have been one of the main reasons why wireless carriers have been moving to shut down their copper networks.

In a report in April 2025, Analysys Mason senior analyst Michela Venturelli said that telecom operators may face limited financial benefits from investing in their fiber networks if they still maintain legacy ones.

“The opex benefits that fibre networks provide might be offset by the cost of running legacy networks in parallel to the newly deployed fibre networks,” said Venturelli.

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This story was originally published October 25, 2026 at 4:07 AM.