Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote at its March 26 meeting on rules intended to “get communities off of old and slow copper lines and onto new, high-speed networks.” Along with freeing up “billions of dollars in private capital” required to operate two (or more) network technologies in parallel, the rules, if adopted, will reduce filing obligations, streamline rules applicable to technology discontinuation, and eliminate other rule provisions rendered redundant due to technological evolution. Ultimately, under the new rules, the FCC will be able to regulate in a technologically neutral manner.

The endgame for the FCC is to bring forward the time when there are no longer any copper last-mile connections in the United States. The copper-network operators have already signaled their intentions by announcing plans to close copper operations and transition customers—both end consumers and commercial customers reselling their copper services to end consumers—to their fiber and fixed-wireless offerings. In June, AT&T will begin decommissioning copper facilities serving approximately 10 percent of its footprint, with plans to completely close copper services nationwide by the end of 2029.

In the US, decommissioning timelines are determined by the network operators, albeit subject to FCC approval. Carr’s announcement indicates an acceleration of this process by reducing regulatory red tape, enabling effort to be focused at the technological rather than the legal end of operations. In AT&T’s case, it is now plausible that the company could complete its copper shutdown earlier than its original target, given that fewer than 3 percent of its customers buy copper services. However, copper shutdown is not uncontroversial, as despite their growing capacities, mobile and satellite services are not universally deemed to offer service quality superior to that of copper connections, and are not technically available in all locations. In an ideal world, some would like all copper services to be replaced with fiber connections; however, the much higher costs of laying fiber to every location with copper would delay the copper closedown even longer. As a disproportionately large share of capital expenditure would be devoted to serving a vanishingly small (and decreasing) number of customers, at some point technological substitution away from fixed lines must be recognized as financially inevitable. The FCC rules explicitly facilitate this realization based on operator cost assessments, not political determinations.

By contrast, copper shutdown plans in New Zealand are marching very much to the beat of the regulatory drum, in a distinctly technologically non-neutral manner. New Zealand differs from the US in that its copper and most of its fiber networks are deployed by a single operator, Chorus, which due to regulations must not engage in retailing directly to end consumers. Chorus and the three other fiber-network operators were part-funded by the government to deploy nationwide fiber connectivity to 87 percent of end consumers, and must sell both copper and fiber services to resellers at regulated rates. Since 2024, Chorus has been able to withdraw copper services in those areas where fiber is available. However, that does not satisfactorily address the remaining percentage of the country where fiber will not be deployed because it is uneconomic to do so. Chorus must continue to offer copper services in these locations, despite the decreasing number of consumers buying copper connections from the resellers and the increasing costs of keeping the copper network available.

By 2024, when copper withdrawal became feasible, only around 75 percent of New Zealand fixed-line broadband customers in fiber-capable areas had switched from copper to fiber. As Chorus does not manage the retail relationships, it is reliant on resellers to manage the substitution calculus presented to end consumers. This depends largely on regulatory price arbitrage and reseller options rather than Chorus’s commercial realities. While Chorus claims to be “committed to a clear, consumer-centric retirement process that supports the transition of customers still on copper to modern services,” and an aspirational 2030 copper network shutdown, it nonetheless must continue to engage in regulatory processes for determining the prices it can charge for both its copper and fiber products. Unlike its unregulated vertically integrated rivals, it does not have a mobile network that would allow it to benefit financially from moving consumers not just from copper to fiber but also from copper to mobile. Neither does it gain any financial benefit from moving customers from copper to fiber in those areas where it is not the government-subsidized fiber provider.

The New Zealand comparison shows how much better off the US was in the copper shutdown stakes even before Carr’s announcement, and how much better placed it will be under the new rules. Likely, copper will be history in the US long before the New Zealand regulatory machine even has a politically sanctioned plan for closure.