AT&T sues – AT&T has sued California, seeking permission to end landline service for about 199,000 potential wireline customers and asking the FCC to prevent the state from enforcing its rules. The dispute centers on California’s rejection of AT&T’s effort to remove a Car
AT&T is taking California to court over a fight that sounds technical—until you realize it’s about who has to keep answering an old phone line, even as the world moves on.
The company sued the state yesterday. arguing California won’t let it stop providing phone service to all potential customers in its wireline network territory. AT&T is also asking the Federal Communications Commission to declare that California cannot enforce its rules and to allow AT&T to stop providing service to about 199. 000 phone customers.
In the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Southern District of California. AT&T framed the core requirement as a costly holdover. California. the company said. requires AT&T to spend $1 billion each year to maintain a century-old telephone network that “almost no one uses.” AT&T added that the copper wires that once served every home now serve just three percent of households in AT&T’s California territory. while customers move away every day to modern broadband services that AT&T described as more affordable. reliable. and energy-efficient.
The company’s immediate problem is a state obligation that prevents it from walking away from landlines. In June 2024. the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) rejected AT&T’s request to eliminate the Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) obligation—an order requiring AT&T to provide landline telephone service to any potential customer in its service territory.
AT&T says it has been allowed to shed similar obligations elsewhere. The lawsuit states that AT&T has received relief from COLR obligations in 20 of the 21 states in its wireline service territory, all except California.
AT&T’s filing leans on that contrast. saying the federal government and virtually all other states where AT&T historically offered POTS [Plain Old Telephone Service] have removed what AT&T described as outdated regulatory obstacles. In AT&T’s view. those changes allow the company to “begin powering down its POTS network” and increase investment in modern communication technologies—while “California stands alone in resisting this progress.”.
AT&T also tied its argument to security and energy use. The company complained that its “barely used copper network is an easy mark for criminals.” It pointed to a specific toll: California has already suffered about 2. 000 outages from copper thefts this year. AT&T also said the network “drains the power grid of over 100 million kilowatt-hours each year.”.
California, however, does not accept AT&T’s broader claim that it’s being blocked from moving forward. The company has argued for years that California prevents it from replacing copper with more modern technology. California officials say AT&T is allowed to upgrade the copper lines with better technology.
Those two positions collide around the same question: whether California’s COLR rules are forcing AT&T to keep something running that it says is outdated and costly, or whether AT&T can modernize the network without being allowed to shut it off.
For now, the legal battle is set up with a clear requested endpoint: AT&T wants the FCC to rule that California can’t enforce its rules, so AT&T can stop providing service to about 199,000 phone customers in its territory.
AT&T California lawsuit Carrier of Last Resort COLR copper theft POTS FCC wireline network landline service