People In The Northeast More Likely To Use Landlines

If your household still has an old-style landline, it might be time to hang it up once and for all, as telephone companies are saying “Cu” to traditional copper cables.

During their investor day earlier this month, cellular giant AT&T announced that it’s phasing out copper wire entirely, meaning that its landline phone service will no longer be available in almost every US state by 2029. Citing the $6 billion of annual costs incurred by legacy copper services, the company outlined plans to go all-in on fiber and wireless, including promoting a new product, “AT&T Phone Advanced”, as a fiber-based replacement for landline phones.

The telecommunications company reported that it’s expanding its wire centers to execute the nationwide exit from copper, though it also stated that “only 5% of [its] residential customers are still using copper voice technology”. Indeed, in the US at least, landlines are already a dying breed: according to the latest National Health Interview Survey from the CDC, an estimated 76% of Americans only used wireless telephone services, compared with 1.3% that solely used landline services — down from 43% just two decades before.

Although only a tiny fraction of America is solely reliant on landlines, there are still tens of millions of households who have one. But, for AT&T execs looking after the company’s bottom line, the math is hard to ignore: the Dallas-based company disclosed that maintenance costs for fiber subscribers are 35% lower than for those still using some 70-year-old copper services.