AT&T to FCC: We won’t fix 600 copper outages — Here’s where they all happened, city by city

AT&T filed a 606-page application with the FCC on July 6, seeking emergency authorization to permanently suspend voice service at 600 locations across 16 states, rather than repair the copper facilities damaged at each site. Wireless Estimator reviewed the full exhibit, which lists every incident individually, and the underlying data tells a clearer story than the filing’s legal boilerplate does.

Copper Theft Is the Overwhelming Driver

Of the 600 incidents listed, 415 — just under 70 percent — are attributed to copper theft, described uniformly in the filing as “thieves stole and vandalized multiple sections of copper cable.” Severe weather accounts for 135 incidents (22.5 percent), while the remaining roughly 8 percent splits across power surges damaging remote terminal equipment (24 incidents), vehicles striking remote terminals (15 incidents), fire damage to outside plant facilities (6 incidents), and cable rendered inoperable by wildlife or rodent intrusion (5 incidents).

The incidents span April 30 through June 20, 2026 — just under eight weeks — and collectively affected 1,697 individual circuits, almost all of them AT&T’s residential legacy voice service.

Texas, Louisiana and Alabama Lead by Volume

Sixteen states appear in the filing. Texas accounts for by far the largest share, with 107 incidents, followed by Louisiana (52), Alabama (50), Florida (49), Oklahoma (46), Missouri (39), Tennessee (38), Mississippi (37), South Carolina and Georgia (33 each), Arkansas (30), North Carolina (27), Kentucky (24), Indiana (20), Kansas (9), and Wisconsin (6).

A Few Sites Account for a Disproportionate Share of the Damage

While most incidents affected only one or two circuits, a handful of outages were far larger. The single biggest was a severe weather event in Houston on June 3 that knocked out 47 circuits. Severe weather also caused a 36-circuit outage in Prairie Village, Kansas on June 16, and a 26-circuit power surge in Waller County, Texas on June 2 damaged remote terminal equipment across that many lines at once.

Copper theft produced its own share of large-scale damage: 20 circuits each in Pikeville, Kentucky (June 1), a second incident in nearby Whitesburg, Kentucky routed through the same wire center two days later, and in Gretna, Louisiana (June 8). Clinton, Louisiana was hit twice in the filing window — an 11-circuit power surge on June 3, followed by a separate 13-circuit copper theft incident just a week later, on June 10.

AT&T’s Legal Position: It Won’t Fix Any of It

The application isn’t seeking time to make repairs. AT&T is asking the FCC to authorize permanent discontinuance of service at every one of the 600 sites, arguing in the filing that restoring copper facilities serving “relatively few customers” no longer makes economic sense given the company’s plan to retire the large majority of its legacy copper network by the end of 2029. In place of repairs, AT&T points to its AT&T Phone — Advanced and AT&T Phone for Business — Advanced products — IP-based voice services delivered over broadband or wireless — along with mobile service from other carriers, as adequate substitutes the FCC has previously accepted in similar filings.

AT&T has informed Wireless Estimator that, in its most recent authorization for discontinuance, all 600 locations have access to at least one reliable alternative service, whether through AT&T’s products or a competing wireless carrier.

The application was signed by AT&T attorney Brett Farley and cites Section 63.63 of the FCC’s rules, which governs emergency discontinuance authority, along with five prior AT&T filings the company says establish precedent for treating its Phone — Advanced products as an adequate replacement service.

The Bigger Picture

This filing is one piece of a broader push. AT&T has separately petitioned the FCC to preempt California’s Carrier of Last Resort rules, sought forbearance from related obligations, and filed applications to discontinue service across 360 California wire centers — all part of the company’s stated plan to exit copper operations across the large majority of its wireline footprint by 2029.

On June 29, the FCC cleared AT&T’s request to discontinue copper voice services at more than 184,000 locations in California.

The 600 incidents in this filing represent copper theft and storm damage as an ongoing, week-to-week operational reality across AT&T’s footprint, not an isolated event — and the company’s response, increasingly, is to treat each one as a fresh occasion to stop offering the service rather than repair the line.

Table 1: Cause of Outage, All 600 Incidents

Table 2: All 600 Incidents by State

Incidents are grouped by state (alphabetically) and listed in date order within each state, as filed by AT&T.