- The U.S. government is picking up the pace on copper retirement reform
- Operators will still have to deal with states if they want to fully shut down their legacy networks
- Copper retirement is further along in Europe, but progress is a mixed bag
What has long been a thorn in the side for telecom operators could become significantly less painful, as the U.S. government finally makes headway on copper retirement reform.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday took action that aims to make it easier for service providers to ditch their decades-old copper networks. “Outdated FCC rules have left Americans sitting in the slow lane for far too long,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a statement.
Specifically, the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau adopted four orders that do the following:
- Allow providers to use “streamlined procedures” more often when they wish to discontinue copper
- Lets providers retire voice services even if there isn’t another standalone voice option available
- Waives “unnecessary requirements” when a provider grandfathers a legacy service, meaning it’s no longer offered to new customers
- Waives “costly and excessive notice requirements in cases where they provide no demonstrable benefit”
But make no mistake – it’s not completely open season on copper. Operators must still deal with carrier of last resort (COLR) obligations from states, said New Street Research Policy Analyst Blair Levin.
A provider designated as a COLR is required to offer basic telephone services to any customer who requests it and needs the state’s permission before leaving the market. Both AT&T and Lumen have tried – and failed – to end their COLR obligations in certain states. Doing so would leave customers without a suitable replacement provider, the states argued.
“We believe prevailing Supreme Court precedent prohibits the FCC from preempting the states enforcing their own COLR rules,” Levin wrote in a note Friday.
Furthermore, the FCC said it will still guard against price hikes by “ensuring that consumers transitioning to new networks get access to services at similar or lower price points.”
Caveats aside, the policy changes still spell out good news for operators with excess copper baggage. Not only is it costly to maintain copper, but people steal the cables as the metal fetches a high price on the market.
Brightspeed, which has been very vocal about its copper woes (and even launched a fixed wireless service for its copper footprint), was thrilled to hear the news.
“Every dollar spent on the aging copper networks is a dollar we can’t spend on deploying fiber,” said Brightspeed CEO Tom Maguire in a statement.
We can also expect AT&T to pick up the pace on its copper retirement efforts. The operator earlier this year announced plans to stop selling legacy copper products in about 1,300 wire centers, which is approximately one-quarter of its footprint.
The state of copper retirement abroad
Though adoption varies by country, Europe seems to be ahead of the U.S. in fiber broadband penetration. Nevertheless, copper retirement progress remains inconsistent across the region.
Only 12 countries in Europe have a plan for “complete copper switch-off,” according to a January study from FTTH Council Europe. Operators in Portugal, Spain and Sweden have mostly discontinued their copper networks, with Spain’s Telefónica and Swedish operator Telia expected to shut off their remaining copper services by 2026.
Elsewhere, countries like Germany (which has notably struggled with fiber rollouts), Greece and the Czech Republic are still pretty reliant on legacy technology. Only 10 countries are optimistic about achieving total copper switch-off by 2030, said regulatory body BEREC.
“In almost all countries where at least some parts of the copper network have been switched-off, a few percent of end users had to be forcibly switched off, leading some countries to postpone some switch-off steps,” BEREC wrote in December.