Starting November 15, AT&T has federal clearance to begin shutting off copper landline service across parts of Kansas and Missouri, a move that could leave seniors and households with medical-alert systems, burglar alarms or elevator phones scrambling for alternatives. The cutoff stems from a retirement plan AT&T filed with the Federal Communications Commission, which covers wire centers tied to roughly 1,060 local calling areas across 18 states, according to the company's filing.
The Federal Communications Commission automatically approved AT&T's application on January 12, 2026, after a streamlined 31-day review period following public notice, as reported by Broadband Breakfast. The approved wire centers span Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and Missouri, among other states, and collectively serve about 90,000 customers nationwide, per the outlet's reporting. In Kansas, 89 communities could be affected by the shutoff, while 86 Missouri communities are listed in AT&T's filing, according to KCTV5.
What AT&T Is Offering Instead
AT&T says affected customers should receive direct notice along with replacement options, and the company is pointing people toward either a broadband-based landline replacement service or a standard mobile line, the Broadband Breakfast report notes. One of those options is AT&T Phone-Advanced, a plain-old-telephone-service alternative built to support legacy devices like fax machines, alarm systems and medical monitoring equipment over wireless or fiber networks, according to the same filing coverage covered separately by the outlet's reporting.
Customers whose homes rely on copper-dependent devices should contact both AT&T and their device provider directly to confirm those systems will keep working once the switch happens, per KCTV5's reporting on the filing. That guidance carries particular weight for seniors and others who depend on landline-based medical alerts, burglar alarms or elevator phones, categories the station's report specifically flags as vulnerable to disruption.
A Shrinking Copper Footprint Nationwide
The Kansas and Missouri cutoff is one piece of a much larger pullback. AT&T has already decommissioned copper-based services in more than 500 communities covering 1.3 million locations across 18 states, and the company now says just 1% of its eligible customers still use legacy copper-based voice technology, down sharply from 5% of residential customers in December 2024, according to a Light Reading report. The company has shut down more than 100 wire centers so far and expects to complete decommissioning in another 1,500 communities over the next year, the outlet reports.
AT&T's early approach has leaned on wireless migration in areas with adequate coverage, with a later phase targeting regions where the company has already built out fiber, Light Reading reports. Nationally, the shift away from copper has been underway for years: copper last-mile subscriptions fell 81% between 2014 and 2024, and the country still had 15.0 million POTS lines in service as of June 2025, according to a copper retirement tracker from chnlsync.com.
Conflicting Timelines for the Finish Line
Exactly when AT&T will wrap up copper retirement outside California remains unsettled in the public record. Broadband Breakfast reports AT&T plans to retire the large majority, but not all, of its copper outside California by the end of 2029 — a timeline echoed by chnlsync.com, which cites AT&T's Form 10-K stating the company's stated goal is to exit copper across the large majority of its footprint by the end of 2029. Light Reading, however, describes AT&T as moving ahead with a plan to decommission the bulk of its copper network, aside from California, by 2030. Many customers have come to associate the broader copper retirement push with a 2029 target, though the KCTV5 report notes that framing reflects general customer understanding rather than a single confirmed completion date.
What Federal Rules Require
Federal regulations do provide some baseline protection for customers caught in these transitions. The Federal Communications Commission states that incumbent carriers must provide notice of planned copper retirements to all retail customers whose copper connection to the premises will be replaced by fiber to the premises, according to guidance published by the FCC. For now, affected households in Kansas and Missouri are left watching for that direct notice from AT&T and weighing whether a broadband line or mobile service can reliably replace the copper connections some have relied on for decades.
