AT&T: Just 1% of Eligible Customers Still Rely on Copper Voice Lines

AT&T says just 1 percent of its eligible customers still use traditional copper telephone lines, as the operator works to replace most of its aging copper network with fiber and wireless services by the end of 2029.

The figure, disclosed in an Oct. 19 corporate update, is the strongest signal yet of how far the copper retirement has already progressed — and how little of the legacy voice base remains to be migrated before the decade closes.

How much copper has already gone?

The scale is no longer marginal. AT&T reports it has discontinued copper services in more than 500 communities, covering more than 1.3 million locations across 18 states. For perspective, that is equivalent to retiring copper across a city the size of Philadelphia or Phoenix, spread county by county and state by state.

The pace is set to accelerate rather than plateau. The company plans to upgrade customers in another 1,500 communities over the next year — roughly three times the number of communities affected so far, compressed into a single year. If that timetable holds, the retirement effort will have touched more than 2,000 communities in total by late 2027.

That acceleration is the number worth watching. The 1 percent residual voice base is small, but the remaining 1,500 communities represent the harder geography: the places where fiber builds and wireless substitutions have not yet caught up with the copper already in the ground.

What is AT&T actually promising?

The company is framing the transition as a service continuity exercise rather than a withdrawal. Susan Johnson, AT&T's Senior Executive Vice President of Transformation and Supply Chain, said: "As we transition away from copper, we're committed to always being there for our customers who have relied on us to connect for generations."

The pledge is broad. The update does not specify what proportion of the affected 1.3 million-plus locations have moved to fiber rather than fixed wireless, nor does it break out how many of the remaining customers are residential versus business users — a distinction that matters, because business copper lines often back alarm systems, elevators and payment terminals that do not migrate cleanly to wireless substitutes.

What the company has put on the record is a date: most of the copper network replaced by the end of 2029. Roughly three years of runway now separates that deadline from the current state of play, and the 1,500-community tranche due within the next year will test whether the timeline is achievable.

What remains unsaid

The 1 percent headline carries an asterisk the update does not fully unpack: it applies to "eligible" customers. That word does the heavy lifting. Customers not yet eligible — presumably those still waiting for fiber or wireless alternatives to reach them — sit outside the denominator, which means the true share of AT&T's footprint still dependent on copper for voice is necessarily higher than the headline suggests.

The company also does not say how many of the 1.3 million locations in retired communities have actually taken a replacement service, as opposed to simply losing the copper option. Discontinuation and migration are not the same event, and the update reports only the first.

For the remaining copper holdouts, the practical question is procedural: what happens at the moment of discontinuation — an automatic cutover, a proactive outreach campaign, or a customer-initiated order. AT&T's statement on continuity gestures at the first two, but the update offers no figures on migration completion rates.

The road to 2029

The trajectory is now well past its halfway point in community count, if not in difficulty. With copper gone in more than 500 communities and 1,500 more scheduled within the next year, AT&T is betting that the remaining transitions — the slowest, most dispersed ones — can be finished before the end-of-2029 deadline it has set for itself.