As discourse surrounding lead-covered cables continues to mount, AT&T said it estimates the contamination spans less than 10% of its copper footprint.
The operator revealed this information in a Tuesday court filing, noting that percentage represents roughly 200,000 miles of its two million miles of copper cabling, “the overwhelming majority of which remains in active service.”
AT&T said more than two-thirds of its lead-covered cables are “either buried or in conduit, followed by aerial cable, and with a very small portion running underwater.”
The Wall Street Journal’s investigative report on the issue unveiled at least 2,000 old telco cables are coated with degraded lead, which has degraded and contaminated locations in water, soil and from overhead lines.
Following the report’s publication, the major telcos saw their stocks take a downturn. AT&T shares fell nearly 7% this week – their lowest level in three decades.
Furthermore, AT&T in its filing said it doesn’t plan to immediately remove lead-clad cables from Lake Tahoe, one of the areas the WSJ tested for contamination. AT&T initially agreed to remove these cables in 2021.
The operator said it “strongly disagrees” with the Journal’s reporting and that the article’s information “differs dramatically from the expert testing commissioned by AT&T.”
A lawyer representing AT&T said in the filing the company has “serious concerns” about the WSJ’s testing methods, arguing they were conducted by “individuals with clear agendas and conflicts of interest,” calling out environmental groups such as Environmental Defense Fund and Below the Blue.
“In the spirit of transparency and informed public health, the parties should agree to maintain these cables in place to permit further analysis by any qualified and independent interested party, including the EPA, and allow the safety of these cables to be litigated with objective scientific evidence rather than sensationalized media coverage,” the lawyer wrote.
NSR updates AT&T’s remediation outlook
It’s unclear at this point exactly how many lead-sheathed cables companies will have to remove or how much it will cost. Analysts from New Street Research predict AT&T could pay $4.6 billion to remove cabling that’s either aerial or buried in conduit.
Assuming AT&T has around 200,000 miles of lead-sheathed cables, NSR estimates 126,000 miles of those are in conduit, 50,000 aerial, 14,000 buried and 10,000 running underwater. It would cost roughly $5 per foot to remove contaminated copper that is hung aerially or buried in conduit.
Figuring out the cost to remove buried lead-sheathed cables is trickier, as NSR noted industry sources have told the firm they aren’t sure if these buried cables can be removed, “and that they’ve seen attempts to do so abandoned in the past.”
“If the buried cables are left in place, ~140k of the 200k lead-sheathed cables would not require remediation, drastically reducing the total cost,” wrote NSR.
AT&T’s disclosure comes shortly after TDS Telecom revealed on Monday it found 10 miles of lead-sheathed copper across its network.
NSR added TDS’ legacy wireline operations was never part of the Bell System, where the old telco cables likely originate, but instead are “a combination of 105 local telephone companies that relied on the Bell network for long distance calls.”
Further, TDS began its wireline operations in the 1960s. Although some of those 105 companies have networks that pre-date this, “most were built after the lead sheathing of cables had stopped.”
“This suggests the legacy TDS networks were primarily composed of local connections rather than the dense circuits that are the focus of the WSJ’s lead investigation,” said NSR.