Copper Retirement Tracker: AT&T, Verizon and Lumen
AT&T Copper Retirement by State, Verizon and Frontier Landline Discontinuation, the FCC’s 2026 Order and What a Notice Letter Means

Yes, wire center by wire center. AT&T has FCC approval to begin discontinuing copper landline service in parts of 18 states starting November 15, 2026, Verizon has approval in parts of eight states, and Lumen closed new copper POTS orders across its legacy territory in 2025. The FCC's March 2026 order made carrier applications to discontinue legacy service faster to approve.

It depends on the carrier and the wire center. AT&T's 18-state batch approved in January 2026 can start on November 15, 2026, Verizon's customer notices for its eight approved states say on or after November 16, 2026, and AT&T plans to retire the large majority of its copper outside California by the end of 2029. The date on your own notice letter is the one that applies to that site.

Copper retirement, also called the copper sunset, is a carrier shutting down its copper telephone network and the landline service that runs on it. The carrier files with the FCC to discontinue the service, notifies customers and offers a replacement over its broadband network or wireless. Fire alarm panels, elevator phones, alarm panels, fax machines and ATMs that still use those lines need a new connection before the shutoff.

AT&T's January 2026 approval covers wire centers in 18 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. The FCC approved it on January 12, 2026, and discontinuance can start November 15, 2026. AT&T has also applied for portions of 360 California wire centers, proposed for on or after June 1, 2027, and that application is pending.

It means AT&T has included the copper service at that site in a discontinuance filing, and once the FCC approves it, as it did for the 18-state batch in January 2026, the service can be shut off on or after the date in the letter. It is not a single cutoff day for every customer, and AT&T offers its own broadband-based phone service or a mobile line as the replacement. For an organization with many sites, log the letter against the site and its lines, then plan the replacement for every line there, starting with fire alarm and elevator lines.

Yes, in parts of eight states so far, with nine more under review. Its application for eight states, filed mostly through its former Frontier companies (Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin), was granted automatically on August 21, 2026. Its August 10, 2026 request for Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia was removed from automatic grant because the FCC needs more time, which is not a final decision.

Yes, through Verizon, which closed its acquisition of Frontier in January 2026. Verizon's application to discontinue copper voice service in former Frontier areas of eight states was granted on August 21, 2026, and its customer notices give a date of on or after November 16, 2026. Former Frontier territory is also part of Verizon's nine-state request now under FCC review.

Lumen closed new copper POTS orders across its legacy CenturyLink territory in 2025, so new copper lines cannot be ordered there. It also publishes rolling copper retirement notices covering wire centers in multiple states. Check any Lumen notice for the date and the sites it covers.

FCC 26-19, adopted March 26, 2026, eliminated the filing requirements in the network change disclosure rules, so the FCC no longer issues public notices or runs an objection process for copper retirements. It applies a 31-day automatic grant period to all discontinuance applications, lets carriers stop selling legacy copper services to new customers, and makes state and local rules that keep legacy networks running after FCC approval subject to preemption.

Industry analyses of the FCC's 2026 order put the gap between a customer notice and disconnection at as little as 90 days. That is not a rule the FCC set, and AT&T's 18-state batch gave about a year: notices in November 2025 for a start date of November 15, 2026. Plan for the short case, because permits, inspections and installs across many buildings take time.

It can when a contract that held the rate ends. One public example: after North Carolina's AT&T contract expired at the end of 2025, the state's IT department published sample tariff rates of $2,460.12 a month per POTS line against $34.42 under the contract, noting the samples may not reflect final pricing and exclude regulatory surcharges and fees. That is one state's published sample, not a forecast of anyone else's bill, but it is a reason to check every contract end date in your portfolio before the carrier's dates.

They need a new communication path before the copper line is shut off, and the local authority having jurisdiction decides whether the replacement is acceptable. Fire alarm panels are reviewed by the fire marshal under NFPA 72, and elevator emergency phones by the elevator inspector under ASME A17.1. Confirm the replacement with the AHJ before installation.

No. The carrier's replacement is one option, not the only one, and for a portfolio with many line types it may not fit every line. Replacement providers price the same line list differently depending on line type, coverage at each site and monitoring, so running them at the same time is how you compare real totals.

We update it as new carrier approvals, requests and FCC actions are announced, not on a fixed schedule. Every change is added to the tracker log with the date it happened, the date we logged it and its source. Figures on this page are as of October 2026.