AT&T Seeks Easier Path Toward Decommissioning Copper Network

AT&T needs freedom to address its copper network, including parts that are more than 100 years old, but regulation requires that the network keep operating, Chris Sambar, executive vice president-technology operations and head of network, said Tuesday during an AT&T Policy Forum. Sambar said he plans meetings at the FCC this week when he will discuss the cost for AT&T and other carriers of keeping copper lines operating.

AT&T spends more than $10 billion annually maintaining its copper connections, Sambar said, which is "a lot of money.” Sambar compared the regulatory mandate to the government telling Apple it must maintain the first Macintosh computers, which were built 40 years ago. Sambar asked: How would that change Apple’s ability to innovate and offer new products?

While AT&T has millions of miles of copper lines, only 5% remains in use, Sambar said. But that means, for example, if a rural customer has a copper connection, the line must be operational, which can mean maintaining a sheath of thousands of copper lines for a single customer many miles away, he said: “That’s literally how it works.”

Sambar said before he started in his current position, he didn’t understand “how much effort and energy we’re putting into the old copper network, versus” focusing on fiber and wireless. Initially, copper wires were wrapped in paper and later lead sheath, he said. When the copper gets wet it takes days, and sometimes weeks, to dry, he said. “There’s a lot better technology now.”

Sambar contrasted wireline requirements with the relative freedom of wireless. AT&T was able to shut its 2G and 3G networks, and now has 4G and 5G operations only, he said. In Europe, regulators have forced providers to keep early generation networks open even as 5G is deployed, he said. A customer with a traditional wireline phone has other options, including wireless, fixed wireless and cable, he said. Consumers have a lot more options than when the carrier of last resort rules were approved, he said.

AT&T still has DSL customers who average 400-600 GB a month of usage, with download speeds of 35-50 MBs, Sambar said. The carrier has some customers on DSL first generation, which is even slower, but most are moving to fixed wireless, he said. The typical fiber customer averages more than a TB of broadband per month, he said. “The old copper subscribers aren’t getting the experience that they probably want,” he said: “Wouldn’t it be better to shut that down, overbuild it with fiber and let’s move on to the new technology.”

It takes AT&T nine months to a year to get a neighborhood ready for fiber and then install it, and the expectation is the fiber will serve customers for 30-40 years, Sambar said. AT&T is still using fiber that was built in the 1970s and 1980s, and doesn't know fiber's lifetime, he said. Today's fiber is more resilient than what was built decades ago, he said.

AT&T needs regulatory certainty, Sambar said: “You can’t expect any company to invest billions of dollars in a product that they expect to last for 30 or 40 years if it’s an uncertain regulatory framework.”

“The most critical commodity in disasters is information” and communications carries information, another speaker, Karen Marsh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Analysis and Capacity Division, said. Marsh said AT&T’s FirstNet offering has proven helpful. When people are in a disaster, “the first thing that goes through their mind is what’s happening, where’s my family, what do I do,” she said: “That is where communications is so critical.” You need reliability and surge capacity, she said.

Kevin Thompson, chief operations officer of the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative, noted that fiber is 60%-90% more energy efficient than copper wires. But challenges loom. Thompson predicted that generative AI's energy demand will surge when the technology is more widely deployed. “It’s going to make the energy demands of cryptocurrency look like child’s play.”

Indeed, Thompson noted Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently spoke of possibly allowing mini-nuclear power plants because of generative AI's energy needs, Thompson said. “Life is going to be more digital and data intensive,” he said. The U.S. cannot depend on copper infrastructure if it wants to meet climate targets, he said. “If we have to scale to generative AI off of copper, we’re toast.”