Phone service providers are starting to bury landlines
AT&T is the latest phone provider that just took a step further in retiring traditional landlines.
If you still have a phone landline, then you may soon be the owner of a historical artifact.
Phone service providers are starting to push the button on retiring Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), or copper-based landlines, as the demand for the service has been plummeting in recent years. AT&T is the latest provider to further push the initiative to pull back on copper landline service as it sent a request to the California Public Utilities Commission to discontinue offering it.
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In California, AT&T is considered a “Carrier of Last Resort,” which means that it is required to provide Plain Old Telephone Service to all consumers in the state who request it. On Jan. 26, AT&T submitted a request to the California Public Utilities Commission to abandon that requirement.
In AT&T’s application to the commission, it claims that its current requirement to provide Plain Old Telephone Service is “outdated” and that it forces the company in the state to “operate and maintain two duplicative networks: one, an antiquated, narrowband network with an ever-dwindling base of subscribers, and the other, a forward-looking, fiber and wireless broadband network,” it said.
AT&T has been hunkering down on expanding its fiber and wireless network options for consumers as it has seen AT&T Fiber, which includes digital phone services, revenue grow by 26.6% in the fourth quarter last year, compared to the same time period the year before.
“As we advance our lead in converged connectivity, we will continue to scale our best-in-class 5G and fiber networks to meet customers’ growing demand for seamless, ubiquitous broadband, and drive durable growth for shareholders,” said John Stankey, AT&T CEO, in the company’s 2023 fourth-quarter earnings report.
According to the Rural County Representatives of California, a group who disagrees with AT&T’s request to the California Public Utilities Commission, it claims that if the company’s request is approved, “over 580,000 affected AT&T customers would be left with fewer options in terms of choice, quality, and affordability.”
The move from AT&T comes after Pascal Desroches, a chief financial officer at AT&T, said in a recent earnings call regarding the fourth-quarter of 2023 that the company expects to face a “continued decline in legacy copper revenues,” which further hints that the demand for traditional landlines has decreased.
AT&T is not the only phone service provider to see dwindling demand in its copper landline service. In Charter Communications’ fourth quarter earnings report for 2023, it revealed that “residential wireline voice customers declined by 248,000, compared to a decline of 232,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022.”
Verizon also recently has been slowly phasing out Plain Old Telephone Service in several states over the past few years as it aims to replace them with fiber-optic lines.
Cord-cutting isn’t a trend that is only hitting cable TV service as many consumers are pivoting to wireless services. According to a recent survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, around 73% of the adults that were polled during the last few months of 2022 live in households without a telephone landline and are fully dependent on wireless services.
The survey also found that more than half of the respondents who were 65 and older live in households that have landline telephone service.
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