AT&T can stop copper phone service in parts of all nine Bay Area counties from June 1, 2027. Those lines often run a building’s fire alarm, elevator phones and fax. We review them for free and replace the ones you still need.
Many fire alarm panels report to their monitoring company by dialing out over a copper line. If that line is the panel’s only way out, alarms stop reaching the monitoring company the day it stops, and the panel shows a trouble until a new path is in and tested.
What NFPA 72 asks of the new path
The help button in each cab calls out over a phone line. When that line stops, a passenger who presses it reaches no one. Your elevator contractor tests the replacement and signs it off.
Elevator phone line requirements
Burglar alarm dialers, fax numbers, gate callboxes and card terminals that dial out all stop with the line. Some lines on the bill serve nothing any more and only need cancelling.
How to find every lineUntil August 2, 2022, federal rules made the big phone companies lease copper lines to other carriers at regulated prices. Those rules have ended, and carriers passed the increase on to their business customers. That date is also where the “August 2022 POTS deadline” some vendors quote comes from: it ended a price rule in FCC 19-72, not the service.
AT&T’s filing lists telephone exchanges, the local offices your lines run back to, and covers part of each one. Type the city your building is in.
From AT&T’s list of the exchanges in its two applications, published on the CPUC’s site, which also links a map of the affected areas.
Match every line on the phone bill to the device it serves: the fire alarm dialer, each elevator cab, the fax, the gate. Lines that serve nothing can be cancelled today, and the rest become the replacement plan. Our guide to identifying a POTS line shows how to start the list on your own.
No rule makes a building owner move by a set date. June 1, 2027 is the earliest day AT&T may stop the service the lines run on. Fire alarm and elevator lines take the longest to move, because each needs your contractor on site and a test that is signed off, so put them first and the fax and gate lines after.
We do this work across the Bay Area over our own network. The review is free. We then replace the lines still in use and move them onto our circuit, so a single company answers for the lines and the circuit. Every step is laid out on our page for POTS line replacement in the Bay Area.
Decision D.24-06-024 dismissed Application A.23-03-003 with prejudice. No other carrier of last resort serves AT&T’s territory, and none applied to take its place.
Source: CPUC Decision 24-06-024 (PDF)
Two Section 214 applications to discontinue copper phone service, WC 26-120 for business lines and WC 26-121 for residential; a petition asking the FCC to preempt California’s carrier of last resort rules (WC 26-125); a petition for forbearance from its federal eligible telecommunications carrier duties in California (WC 26-123); and a suit asking the federal court to declare those state rules preempted, Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. Reynolds, No. 3:26-cv-03148 (S.D. Cal.).
Public notice DA 26-539 covers portions of 360 California wire centers. It set June 15 for comments and June 29, 2026 for the automatic grant.
The People of the State of California and the CPUC asked the FCC to reject the applications or, at a minimum, to take them out of streamlined processing.
The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau let the automatic grant take effect, so AT&T now holds federal authority for both discontinuances.
AT&T had asked the court to stop California officials from applying the carrier of last resort and tariff rules to its plan to stop taking new copper phone customers. The court denied the motion after a hearing, and the case continues on an amended complaint AT&T filed on August 20, 2026.
Replies on WC 26-125 and WC 26-123 were due July 22, 2026, and the FCC has decided neither petition. Under 47 U.S.C. §160(c), the forbearance petition is granted by default unless the FCC denies it within one year of receiving it, a period the FCC may extend by 90 days.
Source: FCC order DA 26-598 (PDF)
Its application for review asks the Commission to deny AT&T’s applications, or to send them back to the Wireline Competition Bureau for review outside the streamlined process. The FCC has not ruled on it.
The CPUC opened Rulemaking R.24-06-012 on June 20, 2024. Decision D.26-06-020 moved its statutory deadline to this date so the Commission can weigh a staff proposal and a joint proposal from AT&T and the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office.
Source: CPUC Decision 26-06-020 (PDF)
DA 26-539 lists this date for business and residential service alike, absent further action by the FCC.