The landline isn’t extinct in America, but it might be by 2030

If your household still has an old-style landline, it might be time to hang it up once and for all, as telephone companies say “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 our 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.

Dialing back

Though 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.

Other providers are moving on from less reliable, more demanding copper services, too. Verizon, the largest cellular-service company in the US, announced plans to retire its copper cables in April, with Frontier and TDS also reportedly moving on from their copper networks. For AT&T specifically, decommissioning the most energy-hogging section of its business will help it keep its “leading position in the US fiber-optic business,” per the WSJ, as well as make headway in providing services to an ever-growing number of wireless customers.

Are you still there?

While cellular providers continue to pull back on landlines, it might be harder to sever these long-lived connections in some areas than others.

The Northeast, for example, has much higher usage rates of wired phones than any other part of the US, with more than half of New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Jersey residents reporting still using the service. Why? Well, as suggested by The Washington Post last year, the near monopoly on landlines held by Verizon in almost every Northeastern state could have something to do it, with the company offering “triple-play” phone, broadband, and cable TV packages to customers at the turn of the digital age... which have stayed on hold ever since.