AT&T will eliminate its landline phone service in almost every state in its service area, including Wisconsin, the company announced this week.
Since early this year, AT&T has said its copper wire phone lines are “antiquated” and require costly service that is not as effective as wireless broadband networks. However, critics say landlines are a crucial service for people who live in rural areas with limited cell service, particularly older people who are more likely to rely on landlines.
AT&T currently operates a landline in 21 states and plans to eliminate the service in every state except California, according to USA TODAY.
Here’s what to know about AT&T’s landline services.
An operational landline telephone on a desk at Still Bend Thursday, November 29, 2018, in Two Rivers, Wis.
When will AT&T eliminate landlines by?
AT&T is aiming to eliminate landlines by 2029, the company said.
The company is allotting five years for the shift to give customers and the Federal Communications Commissions proper notice, an AT&T representative told USA TODAY. Mobile carriers must get permission from the FCC before discontinuing landline services for both new and existing customers.
“This is a multiyear process to ensure that every single customer has voice and 911 and access to an alternative before we are able to discontinue the copper-based landline service,” said Susan Johnson, the company’s executive vice president of wireline transformation and supply chain.
Why is AT&T eliminating its landlines?
The AT&T copper wire network is 70 years old and becoming increasingly unreliable, Johnson said. It doesn’t do well in water or during storms, the company is “experiencing a lot of copper theft” with copper value on the rise, she said.
The network is also expensive to maintain and uses a lot of electricity and energy, Johnson said, adding it is not good for the environment to expend resources on a technology that only 5% of residential customers and 5% of commercial customers use.
How common are landlines in Wisconsin?
Like the rest of the country, landline use has declined in Wisconsin in recent decades. Still, just over 15% of adults in the state still use a landline, according to a 2022 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics.
About 3% of Wisconsin adults rely entirely on landlines, while 5.5% identified as mostly landline users. And 6.6% said they used both wireless and landline services.
Nationwide, more than three-quarters of Americans live in homes without landlines, according to the NCHS’s most recent report. However, the age distribution is skewed: more than 90% of adults between 30 and 34 years old are wireless-only, compared to 55% of adults over 65.
In contrast, 20 years ago, only about 5% of Americans relied entirely on cellphones. Consumers began to ditch landlines in large numbers around that time.
A visitor walks past US multinational telecommunications AT&T logo at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry’s biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2023.
What can AT&T landline users do?
If you’re an AT&T landline user in Wisconsin, you have a few options.
For customers who don’t want or need a broadband connection, Johnson said AT&T has a new product named “AT&T Phone – Advanced” that is a landline alternative. It can be used with an existing landline phone, plugs into a jack and connects to AT&T’s wireless network. The phone costs $45 a month, she said.
You can also switch over to another mobile carrier. Vonage, Spectrum, Verizon and Community Phone all still offer home phone services, though be sure to check their websites to see if coverage is available in your area.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: AT&T to halt landline service in Wisconsin and 20 other states