The public comment period has now ended in the docket opened by the Federal Communications Commission to help the agency determine whether and why the agency should preempt California state laws that prohibit former telcos from retiring copper plant in favor of fiber, fixed wireless or other high-speed connections. The central question being asked in the FCC’s proceeding is whether California can (and should) force a telephone company to keep 130-year-old copper wire in the ground indefinitely, and call that consumer protection?
The answer is no, it cannot, and it should not. The FCC has already told states they may not order carriers to maintain the copper network forever, and in June it cleared AT&T to retire copper voice service at more than 184,000 California locations. The state is fighting to undo it, in the Ninth Circuit and now in this docket. On the facts, and on what Californians themselves say they want, the FCC has this right and California has it backwards.
Start with the copper. The copper telephone loop is the first strung technology in the 1800s, older than powered flight, older than the transistor, and older than the interstate highway. It was a marvel in its era. That era is over. A pair of copper wires carry a few megabits on a good day, corrodes in the rain, and is worth enough as scrap that thieves cut it out of the ground. Fiber carries thousands of times the capacity over the same route and costs less to run once it is in. Fixed wireless and satellite now reach the hardest addresses for a fraction of what new copper costs to deploy. There is no measure left on which copper wins.
Californians know it. Over the past year, Recon Analytics asked more than 40,000 of them which provider they would choose for home internet. Fixed wireless drew 45%, fiber 24%, and satellite 4%: nearly three-quarters chose a technology that is not copper. Cable took 12%. Copper DSL drew under 8%, and even that overstates it, because a third of the people who named AT&T’s copper option already have AT&T fiber. They are not asking for copper; they are staying loyal to AT&T. Strip the brand loyalty and demand for copper as a technology rounds to nothing. Given a real choice, Californians pick the future, and they pick it decisively.
So what is California protecting? The case for the mandate is that copper is a lifeline: it carries its own power, works in a blackout (as long as one has back-up battery power for their cordless phones connected to the copper), and the people still on it skew older, poorer, and more rural. The fear underneath is that allowing companies to retire copper means some consumers will have zero connectivity at home, no voice, no Internet. This is simply not the case.
Consider the FCC’s National Broadband Map. Of California’s 10.25 million homes and small businesses with broadband service, the map counts 39,024, or 0.4%, with DSL as their only wired or fixed-wireless option, and every one of those 39,024 sits within reach of satellite. Not a single California household would be left with zero connectivity solutions. None. The people losing a DSL line are not falling off the grid; they are being moved off the slowest thing on it, toward the cable, fiber, fixed wireless, or satellite options that already reach them.
The blackout worry deserves the same straight answer. It describes copper as it was engineered, not copper as it has aged; decades of deferred maintenance, water damage, and theft have left much of the old plant failing in the very storms where it is supposed to shine. The replacements meet it with battery backup, and the FCC did not simply switch the copper off. It requires a carrier to put an equal or better service in the customer’s hands first, with working 911 and access for people with disabilities, before the old line goes dark. The protection travels to the new technology. What the rule ended was the requirement that it be delivered over Victorian wire.
Look closely and the mandate protects nothing. It freezes a sliver of customers on the slowest network in the state, and it does so at real cost. Keeping copper energized is not free. The money comes out of the same budget that builds fiber, and every dollar spent nursing a corroding line is a dollar that does not connect a home to gigabit service. California’s own consumer advocates have already sketched the way out, agreeing to let a carrier leave copper behind where it commits to build fiber in return. This sort of 1:1 approach belies California’s grave misunderstanding of the communications solutions available to its citizens. Fiber is a fantastic technology but not in every location. Fixed and mobile wireless are also fantastic solutions in many geographies but not in all. And then there’s satellite, including satellite D2D.
California will tell the Ninth Circuit that the FCC has acted arbitrarily and capriciously by granting AT&T’s request to transition 180,000 customers from old copper to a newer, more capable connection.
There is nothing arbitrary about the FCC’s effort to transition the country from antiquated analog networks to an all IP infrastructure. And Californians have spoken. They want fiber, wireless, and satellite, and almost no one is actually stuck on copper. The arbitrary act is the one that commands an industry to maintain technology of the telegraph age, forever, and dress it up as looking out for the little guy. The record is closed and the call is easy. The future is fiber, wireless, and satellite. It is not more than a hundred years of copper, and no state should be able to order anyone to pretend otherwise. Let the copper go.