Verizon's plan to shut off legacy TDM copper phone service across nine states will not be automatically granted, the FCC announced on September 25. The decision removes the operator's discontinuance application from the streamlined approval track and routes it into a fuller review process.

The move is procedural rather than substantive, and the agency took care to frame it that way. "Our removal of Verizon's application from the automatic grant process is not a final determination on the merits," the FCC said in its order. Translation for the telecom sector: Verizon's copper retirement ambitions are not dead, but they now face an open-ended examination with no fixed timeline attached in the public filing.

The decision lands at a moment when US carriers are pushing hard to retire century-old copper networks and migrate customers onto fiber and wireless platforms. Legacy TDM — time-division multiplexing, the circuit-switched technology underpinning traditional plain old telephone service (POTS) — has become an expensive maintenance burden for operators that have already built next-generation access infrastructure across most of their footprints.

The regulatory backdrop matters here. Under FCC rules, carrier requests to discontinue legacy services can qualify for automatic grant if no objections or complications requiring deeper scrutiny arise within a set window. Verizon's nine-state filing has evidently crossed that threshold, prompting the Wireline Competition Bureau to intervene and demand further review.

The contrast with the operator's biggest rival is stark. In June, the FCC granted AT&T's request to discontinue copper voice services at more than 184,000 locations in California. That approval, covering one state, cleared the FCC's process only to run into resistance at the state level: the California Public Utilities Commission has appealed the decision to the three voting FCC Commissioners.

That appeal now sits alongside Verizon's paused application as evidence that copper retirement in the US is becoming a state-by-state negotiation rather than a federally rubber-stamped transition. State regulators have shown they are willing to contest the pace of legacy network shutdowns, particularly where residential voice customers, rural coverage and public safety obligations are involved.

For Verizon, the delay carries commercial weight. Every additional quarter of TDM operation extends the cost of maintaining aging copper plant that generates shrinking revenue, while the operator continues investing in fiber deployment and fixed wireless access as its growth engines. The nine-state scope of the filing also signals how broad Verizon's retirement ambition is — far wider than AT&T's California-only request that nevertheless drew a state appeal.

The FCC's caution also reflects the political environment. Commissioner turnover and pending nominations have made the agency's decision-making more visible, and any action affecting millions of potential legacy voice lines invites scrutiny from consumer advocates and state commissions alike.

What happens next is a merits review with an uncertain timetable. Verizon can still win approval to proceed with its nine-state shutdown, but it will need to satisfy the FCC's concerns — whatever they prove to be — through the full process rather than the streamlined path AT&T secured in June. Meanwhile, the California Public Utilities Commission's appeal of the AT&T decision gives all parties a preview of the friction that awaits carriers as they attempt to close the copper era. How both cases resolve will shape the template for every copper retirement filing that follows.