AT&T met with FCC staff again urging the agency to overturn California’s carrier of last resort rules

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2026 – Some local governments and state telecom regulators are concerned about Verizon’s plan to retire some of its copper infrastructure.

Counties and agencies in Virginia and New Jersey told the Federal Communications Commission they feared the transition would leave rural areas without reliable voice access. The groups asked for more specific information on the locations that would lose copper service and what alternatives were available to them.

The Virginia Association of Counties, which represents 94 counties in the state, wrote that the state’s geography created “obscure rural dead zones” and areas in which power couldn’t be restored quickly in the event of an outage. More than a dozen counties filed concerns individually.

Copper landlines power themselves, and dead phone batteries could “sever 911 access during extended outages,” wrote Dean Lynch, VACo’s executive director.

Like other large incumbent ISPs, Verizon is looking to retire its legacy copper gear, which is expensive to maintain and no longer provides competitive broadband service, an effort FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has been receptive to.

The section of network in the disputed application covered 12 million locations in nine states according to Verizon, but only had 277,000 active users.

VACo said it wanted the application removed from the FCC’s streamlined processing rules, under which it would be automatically approved on Sept. 26, so more information could be requested on the specific locations that would be affected. 

The Virginia State Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator, said that Verizon told the state that 150,000 of the current copper subscribers were in Virginia. The company told VACo that it would not cut service if a household lacked wireless or voice over internet protocol (VoIP) as a replacement, but the counties said they were “confused as to when and how that determination will be made.”

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities said there was “genuine concern” that Verizon’s application would leave homes and businesses without a replacement voice service, including among some residents that had already received discontinuance notices. The agency wanted to know how many locations in New Jersey would be affected and where they were.

In a Sept. 1 email to Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), Verizon attorney Peter Saharko said copper wouldn’t be retired if no alternative were available.

“Before reaching out to our customers with transition details, we will verify that a reliable modern alternative is available at the customer’s location for voice service,” he wrote. “If a suitable replacement is not yet available, we will not discontinue the current copper voice service.”

In another email to Rappahannock County, Va., he said a backup battery would be provided to preserve functionality during power outages.

A Verizon spokesperson said in an email the company was reviewing the governments' comments and would respond in the coming days. The spokesperson reiterated service would only be terminated if an alternative were present, and said retiring copper would free up cash for expanding fiber.

The company has multiple other discontinuance applications pending and received pushback from regulators in Nebraska and Minnesota. 

In response to those concerns, Verizon attorney Randy Clarke last month made a similar argument to Saharko. He said that the company wasn’t seeking approval to turn down every copper location in a given application, only ones where an adequate replacement service was available.

Clarke argued the FCC’s broadband coverage map, upon which the discontinuance applications are based, was accurate enough to discern where service was without location-level filings.

The FCC allowed that application to be automatically approved.

Some lawmakers also weighed in asking for a closer look at Verizon's application, including Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., and Virginia State Senator Russet Perry, a Democrat.

AT&T and Fidium are also looking to turn down swathes of their copper. AT&T filed a new application this month to discontinue service at 600 locations.

New York’s telecom regulator said in a filing posted Monday that the FCC should not streamline a Fidium discontinuance application. Fidium is overbuilding its copper footprint with fiber and is planning to transition customers to VoIP on that fiber.

The New York State Public Service Commission said Fidium’s fiber subsidiary wasn’t authorized to participate in a federal subsidy program for low-income households, and wanted more time to ensure that service wouldn’t be interrupted.

The carrier is asking the FCC to overrule California’s copper retirement rules, which are less friendly to the idea of wireless service as a replacement, making it more difficult to turn off legacy services in the state.

AT&T representatives met with FCC staff on Sept. 3 to make their case again. The company is arguing that telephone service inherently operates across state lines, and thus the FCC has the power to quash state-level rules it doesn’t approve of.

CTIA, the wireless industry group, submitted a filing Friday supporting AT&T’s preemption efforts.