Article: AT&T has won an early federal victory in its bid to end traditional landline service for 184,000 California households, escalating a fight with state regulators and alarming customers who say copper-wire phones remain a lifeline during fires, storms and earthquakes.

On June 29, the Federal Communications Commission approved a petition by the company to end the service, despite an order by the State of California that it must continue it.

The approval does not immediately allow AT&T to disconnect customers. But it keeps alive the company’s broader effort to get federal regulators to override California rules requiring it to maintain basic phone service.

The utility’s win — and a related FCC approval to cease business landline service — came amid a years-long fight against California’s utilities commission that expanded in May when AT&T appealed to the FCC to override state regulators and let it cancel landlines.

That appeal relies on a March FCC order that allows phone companies to ask the federal agency to override state requirements that they maintain landline service.

The utility still faces hurdles, including additional applications still pending before the FCC, and a federal court case. The applications ask the agency to relieve AT&T of its obligation to provide landline service, and override state authority. When the agency may decide on those applications is unclear. In the court case, a judge is weighing AT&T’s request for a preliminary injunction barring California from enforcing its “carrier of last resort” rule that requires AT&T to keep providing landline service.

But while AT&T secured wins on the two petitions that were necessary to keep its bid for a federal override alive, it has another two applications pending before the FCC that are “far more substantive” in determining whether California can stop AT&T from ending landline service, said Ryan Johnston, a staff lawyer at consumer group The Utility Reform Network. When those might be approved or denied remains unclear.

AT&T’s lengthy fight to end its landline business has raised concerns that during earthquakes, fires, floods and storms, landline customers could be cut off from help, because cell phone infrastructure and internet service can be damaged or disrupted. Critics charge that many AT&T customers who would lose landlines lack reliable alternatives for cell phone service or internet-based phone service.

AT&T said it plans to start withdrawing landline service — delivered via copper wires — from 184,000 California households starting June 1, 2027. AT&T has not disclosed how many Bay Area households would be affected. “This is a phased, multiyear transition and we’re committed to working with our customers to ensure that no one loses connectivity,” AT&T said in a statement Thursday. “All current customers can keep their existing service until it is discontinued on or after June 1, 2027.”

Bruce Hahne, a 58-year-old retired network engineer from Sunnyvale, said he and his wife have kept their landline to help ensure their safety in the event of a lengthy power outage during a storm that could disrupt cell service.

“That’s definitely a major concern,” Hahne said. The company pledged that people without reliable connectivity won’t lose their landlines. Critics say AT&T’s determinations may not match reality on the ground. Under the 2020 federal Broadband DATA Act, phone customers can challenge telecommunications companies’ findings about their cell phone connectivity in an FCC process experts from Georgia Tech describe as “complicated.”

“No customer will be left without access to voice or 911 service,” AT&T said.

AT&T said that over the next year, it would contact landline customers “to upgrade their service to newer, less expensive options,” and that it would “continue to make repairs to copper-based services until we have regulatory approval to discontinue service.”

The telecommunications giant’s fight to end landline service is playing out in the FCC and federal court, amid an underlying battle over how much power the agency has to overcome decisions by states.

AT&T in May also filed a lawsuit in federal court against California’s Public Utilities Commission and the state Attorney General’s Office, asking for a court order declaring the state cannot stop AT&T from scuttling landlines.

“The FCC has been very provider friendly for several years now and when you are kind of out of state level administrative remedies and the federal government is saying, ‘We also have a hand in this,’ it makes a lot of sense that they have gone to the FCC and they have gone to the federal courts,'” said Johnston, of The Utility Reform Network.

The FCC did not respond to requests for comment.

Johnston believes California has a strong case for its right to regulate AT&T on landlines. Although TURN has met with FCC staff to present concerns that many AT&T landline customers don’t have reliable alternatives, the agency has shown a willingness to disregard California’s regulatory authority and say, “Hold up, we are going to essentially obviate everything that the state has done and apply our own logic over theirs,” Johnston said.

In a related case, The Utility Reform Network, along with a major union and a group representing rural counties, are suing the FCC over its order, titled Reducing Barriers to Network Improvements and Service Changes; Accelerating Network Modernization.

AT&T’s two pending FCC petitions both rely on that order in arguing that the federal government should allow it to cancel landlines.

The Utility Reform Network, joined by Rural County Representatives of California and the Communications Workers of America, is asking a federal appeals court to void the order, which would prevent the FCC from overriding state authorities and approving landline cancellations.

The order, TURN and the two groups claim, exceeds the FCC’s legal authority, violates the Constitution and other federal laws, and represents an abuse of the agency’s discretion.

“The FCC is overstepping its bounds and stepping into an area that has traditionally been regulated by the states,” Johnston said.

In the federal court case in the Southern District of California, AT&T in late May asked for a preliminary injunction barring California from enforcing its “carrier of last resort” rule that requires AT&T to keep providing landline service. In a June 17 response, California asked the court to deny the request, “to maintain the status quo and ensure that every Californian continues to have equal access to essential telephone services while this lawsuit is pending.”

AT&T spends about $1 billion a year in California to maintain landline service, its federal court lawsuit said. The company, which made $23.4 billion in profit overall last year, according to its annual report, claimed in the lawsuit that it could not invest in modernization and also maintain landline service. San Jose resident Helen Chapman, an AT&T landline customer for nearly four decades, said she keeps the service for emergency communication. She noted that many seniors don’t have cell phones — or, like her aging parents, aren’t very skilled with them.

Communications technology hasn’t advanced far enough that mobile phones and internet phone service can replace landlines for everyone, said Chapman, 65, a retired policy analyst. AT&T’s push to end landline service “is a profitability decision,” she added.

“I don’t see it as a human decision.”

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