If your business still has copper phone lines — the traditional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines that have been the backbone of business communication for a century — your carrier has already made the decision for you. AT&T stopped accepting new copper line orders on October 15, 2025. Full retirement of copper services across AT&T’s footprint is planned by 2029. The lines you have now are the last ones you’ll ever get. And until 2029, the price to keep them is rising fast.
What Is Actually Happening to Copper Phone Lines
POTS lines — Plain Old Telephone Service, also called PSTN lines — are the traditional copper wire telephone connections that ran through virtually every office in America for decades. They’re a separate physical network from the internet, powered at the telephone company’s central office, and they work even during a power outage.
That network is being retired. Not because it stopped working, but because maintaining it has become economically unsustainable. PSTN lines in the United States have collapsed from 171 million in 2005 to 11.7 million in 2024 — a 93% drop. Carriers are spending billions of dollars maintaining copper infrastructure for a fraction of their former customer base. AT&T alone spends approximately $6 billion annually to maintain its copper network.
The timeline is now concrete:
October 15, 2025: AT&T stopped accepting new copper line orders, moves, or changes across nearly 20 states. If your copper line goes down after this date, AT&T will not install a replacement.
March 2025: The FCC cut the required notice period for copper wire center shutdowns from 180 days to 90 days — meaning businesses now have half the time to react when their area is scheduled for retirement.
2029: AT&T’s stated target to retire virtually all remaining copper services nationwide.
Which Systems in Your Business Run on POTS Lines
Most business owners think of POTS lines as their office phones. But copper lines typically run far more than just voice calls in a typical commercial building. Before replacing anything, it’s worth inventorying every copper line on your bill and what it connects to:
Business Phone Lines
The most obvious category — the lines connected to your office phone system or key telephone system. If you’re on a traditional landline system (not already VoIP), every line on your phone bill is likely a copper POTS line. These are the easiest to replace: a VoIP phone system from Phonewire replaces copper lines with SIP trunks over your internet connection, at a fraction of the per-line cost.
For a typical small business paying $80–$150 per copper line per month for basic service, switching to SIP trunks typically costs $15–$25 per channel — with more features, not fewer. The math is simple.
Fax Lines
Many businesses — especially medical offices, law firms, and real estate offices — still maintain dedicated fax lines on copper. These can be replaced with internet fax services (eFax, RingCentral Fax, or similar) that use your existing fax machine connected to an ATA (analog telephone adapter), or with cloud fax services that receive and send faxes as PDFs via email. The copper line itself is eliminated; the fax workflow continues.
Elevator Emergency Lines
Federal code requires every elevator to have an emergency communication line. Historically these were POTS lines. With copper retirement, elevator emergency lines must migrate to cellular or VoIP alternatives — and the deadline is the same as everything else: when your carrier retires the line, it’s gone. Phonewire’s elevator phone service replaces copper elevator emergency lines with cellular-connected units that meet code requirements without a new copper installation.
Alarm and Security System Lines
Burglary alarms, fire alarm monitoring panels, and access control systems commonly use copper POTS lines to communicate with monitoring centers. When the copper line is retired, these systems lose their communication path and may no longer generate alerts. The replacement is typically a cellular communicator added to the alarm panel — a straightforward upgrade your alarm monitoring company can usually handle, but one that requires action before the copper line disappears.
Gate, Door, and Access Control Lines
Entry intercoms, gate call boxes, and door access systems that dial a phone number to grant entry often run on dedicated POTS lines. These can typically be replaced with cellular-capable intercom units or VoIP-connected intercoms depending on the system. An audit of your access control infrastructure before copper retirement in your area is worth doing now rather than after service is interrupted.
Not sure which of your lines are copper POTS lines or what they connect to? Phonewire will walk through your current phone bill and system setup and give you a plain-English replacement plan — free, no obligation.
Schedule a Free Assessment →What to Replace POTS Lines With
The replacement depends on what the line is doing:
For voice phone lines: A VoIP phone system using SIP trunks is the direct replacement. Your calls travel over your internet connection instead of copper wires. The phones look and work the same — the underlying technology is modern, less expensive, and not subject to copper retirement. This is what Phonewire installs.
For non-voice lines (alarms, elevators, fax, gate access): Cellular POTS replacement adapters — sometimes called “POTS in a box” — are small devices that accept the existing analog connection from the alarm panel, elevator phone, or fax machine and route it over a cellular network instead of copper. The connected device doesn’t know the difference. These are typically handled by your alarm company, elevator service contractor, or a telecom specialist.
What This Means for Your Business Phone System Specifically
If you’re running a traditional business phone system on copper lines — whether that’s a KSU key system, a PBX with PRI trunks, or individual POTS lines feeding a smaller system — the copper sunset is the forcing function that makes replacement unavoidable. The question isn’t whether to replace it, but when and with what.
Phonewire replaces copper-dependent phone systems with modern VoIP systems — either the Phonewire Hybrid on-premises appliance or a cloud-hosted system — that run entirely over your internet connection. SIP trunks replace your copper lines. Your phone numbers port over. Your staff gets the same experience plus features you didn’t have before: voicemail to email, business texting, a mobile app, and cellular failover if your internet goes down.
The transition is typically completed in a single installation day. Phonewire keeps your existing system live until cutover so there is no gap in service.
Ready to Replace Your Copper Lines Before Your Carrier Does It for You?
Phonewire will assess your current phone system and copper line setup, give you a specific replacement recommendation, and quote an all-in price for your exact situation. Free consultation, same-day quote.
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