- Verizon’s bid to retire copper lines in nine states is no longer on autopilot after the FCC pulled it from expedited review
- State and local officials warned wireless replacements may fall short in areas with dead zones, no fiber and outage-prone emergency needs
- The fight underscores the growing tension between telcos’ copper cost-cutting plans and communities still relying on landlines as a lifeline
Verizon’s plan to retire its old copper assets in nine states hit a speed bump, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) denied automatic approval of the request and said it needs more time to review the operator’s proposal.
“The commission requires additional time to complete its review,” the FCC wrote. “We emphasize that our removal of Verizon’s application from the automatic grant process is not a final determination on the merits of Verizon’s request for authority to discontinue service.”
Verizon submitted its request on August 10, asking for permission to discontinue residential and business legacy TDM-based voice service on copper lines in Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia starting in October. Its plan included decommissioning copper plant at 382 wire stations across former Frontier Communications properties in five states as well as copper at 280 Verizon-branded wire stations in another three states.
Verizon closed its acquisition of Frontier in January.
Ohio (245) and Virginia (211) were set to have the largest number of wire stations impacted. Delaware was not among the states listed for Verizon’s August retirement cohort, but an earlier notice from February showed it was looking to retire plant at 16 facilities there after May 20.
In late August, the FCC asked the public to weigh in on the request and said at the time it would automatically be granted on September 26 absent further commission action. The request for public comment unleashed a deluge of responses, including from Virginia Congressmen Suhas Subramanyam and Ben Cline.
Landlines as a lifeline
Both Subramanyam and Cline noted their districts include wide swaths of cellular dead zones, making wireless replacement technologies unfeasible. They also noted no fiber alternatives are available and highlighted the fact that while copper lines work during power outages, wireless replacements do not.
“I support the transition to fiber. Modern networks are better networks, and my district benefits from them. But that transition cannot rest on a presumption that a substitute exists where it does not,” Subramanyam wrote. “A senior in Rappahannock County with no cell signal and no fiber at her house is not clinging to old technology. She is being left without a way to call for help.”
He asked that the FCC condition approval of Verizon’s retirement request on “battery backup provided at no cost to the customer, sufficient to maintain 911 access during a power outage.”
Officials from Virginia’s Augusta, Culpeper, Fauquier, Fairfax, Madison and Rappahannock counties all wrote to the FCC with similar concerns, while the State Corporation Commission explicitly asked the FCC to remove Verizon’s application from the expedited review process.
Local officials in New Jersey, including the state Board of Public Utilities, sent letters to the FCC expressing similar concerns about adequate replacements and emergency preparedness.
But the day before the FCC extended its review, Verizon argued “no comment presents any reason to remove the Applications from streamlined treatment,” adding “the Voice Application seeks approval only at locations where customers can obtain from Verizon or another established provider one or more replacement services that comply with the Commission’s standards.”
Verizon said it planned to hold a town hall in Virginia in October to “provide further information about this process.”
Rocky retirement
Efforts to slash its legacy network and operating costs are part of the operator’s $5 billion cost transformation plan. Speaking during Q1 2026 earnings, Verizon CFO Anthony Skiadas explicitly said that plan includes retiring, recycling and monetizing its copper assets.
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said during Q2 earnings: “We have thousands of central offices, many of which we're taking copper out of, and we are retrofitting them to be remote data centers that are power-ready, permitted, fully redundant infrastructure.”
The operator is far from the only one focused on ditching old copper holdings and certainly not alone in facing opposition. Rival AT&T is itself navigating a sticky extraction from its copper business in California, where it has run up against the state’s carrier of last resort obligations. The operator is currently battling it out with state officials in court.
Read more about copper retirement efforts here:
Service providers ditch landline voice, unprofitable areas
AT&T takes multi-prong approach to get out of California landline phone business
AT&T wants off the hook for California landline phone service