"AT&T said in a statement that input and feedback from community stakeholders, including comments in public hearings held and planned “is a critical part of the process of upgrading customers from outdated copper lines to more advanced, higher speed technologies like fiber and wireless, which consumers are increasingly demanding.” (Emphasis added)
There is a logical flaw in this reasoning that suggests modernizing the legacy copper voice telephone lines to fiber to the premises (FTTP) has and is occurring because customers demand it. Hence, the logic goes, there is no need to keep the copper landlines.
The issue isn't customer demand but rather FTTP availability. It's absent in much if not most of AT&T's service territory because AT&T and other telcos instead of replacing it with FTTP kept it in place for decades for dialup and digital subscriber line (DSL) internet. If there had been a timely and orderly transition to FTTP from copper, the issue of whether to keep copper landlines in place wouldn't be an issue.
AT&T might reasonably argue the copper wasn't replaced with FTTP because the business case -- meeting internal ROI requirements -- wasn't there. That calls for a lower cost business model such as a consumer utility cooperative or public ownership that doesn't have to generate profits for investors and pay income taxes.
Update 4/18/24: AT&T California offered the self evident solution: replace the copper with fiber:
[W]e are working with communities across California to upgrade our older copper networks to more resilient, advanced technologies like fiber. For rural communities, upgrading our network not only helps narrow the digital divide, but it also means improving network resiliency, which helps networks withstand and recover from natural disasters and severe weather events.
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