Recently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted rules intended to “get communities off of old and slow copper lines and onto new, high-speed networks.” Allowing telecommunications network providers to retire their decades-old and increasingly expensive copper line networks, the agency asserted, will “[free] up tens of billions of dollars annually for the roll out of upgraded, high-speed networks to more Americans.”
The FCC actions include eliminating a number of filing requirements, overhauling and streamlining rules for technology transition discontinuance applications, and granting blanket authority for carriers to grandfather legacy voice services, lower-speed data telecommunications services, and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol service over copper wire. While these moves have been welcomed by operators, civil society concerns remain about the consequences of copper withdrawal in rural areas where cellular coverage remains poor and urban areas where fiber deployment still has not reached many poorer neighborhoods.
A panel session at last week’s International Telecommunications Society’s 25th biennial conference in Tokyo canvassed the state of copper shutdowns in Japan, New Zealand, and Europe. Led by the University of Pennsylvania’s Christopher Yoo as moderator, panelists Tatsuya Kurosaka of Georgetown University, the Weizenbaum Institute’s Volker Stocker, and myself positioned current US progress in these contexts. The US shares many challenges with these jurisdictions and can draw insights from their experiences, yet the comparison questions assumptions about what a post-copper world will look like and the timeline for such change.
Japan’s extensive, aggressive, and early fiber-to-the-home strategy has positioned the country well for shutting down copper for residential consumers (assuming copper connections will be exchanged for fiber). Yet the metal network still serves millions of subscribers and supports various business and legacy applications, including integrated services digital network (ISDN)–based systems and some enterprise voice services. Significant firm-based investment will be required to transition these applications to fiber-compatible alternatives, necessitating considerable negotiation to ensure minimal interruption in these customers’ connectivity.
Debate in Japan also continues about other copper‑based infrastructures, such as public pay phones, which the government maintains in large numbers (over 100,000 units) as disaster‑resilient communication tools with power supplied from a (distant) exchange rather than dispersed (and vulnerable) local electrical connections. These legacy issues mean that a complete shutdown of the country’s copper networks will be protracted.
New Zealand has also benefitted from widespread fiber deployment, with connections available to 87 percent of the country’s population (urban and suburban). The sole copper provider is withdrawing copper in areas where fiber is available (fewer than 1,000 such connections remain), yet only around 75 percent of households served by fiber are purchasing these connections. Fixed wireless is a cost-effective solution for households with low broadband data usage and is marketed by vertically integrated mobile operators with over 70 percent market share in retail broadband (fixed-line operators cannot engage in retail sales).
Fixed wireless is also popular in rural areas in New Zealand—the 13 percent not covered by fiber. However, low-earth orbit satellite (e.g., Starlink) accounts for 17 percent of rural broadband connections and one in two copper retirements in rural areas. This questions the assumption that extensions to fiber and cellular network coverage are necessary to enable copper retirement. Indeed, as satellite capabilities extend to include text- and voice-over-mobile applications, the cost-effective mobile footprint will arguably move closer to the fiber boundary, increasing the likely satellite market share over time.
Europe provides yet another context (or set of contexts) for comparison. As the conditions vary across the member states, retirement rates are highly variable. Some European operators are fighting the EU requirement to retire copper. For some, this is due to wide use of ISDN. For others, it is the high cost of fiber in remote locations (given the expectation that fiber alone can provide the broadband speeds required to meet copper retirement conditions—normally 1 GB per second). The high costs of deploying fiber while maintaining historical, cultural, and natural environments challenge operators in some locations. Some operators are reluctant to withdraw copper in urban areas as the subsidies used to lower rural prices are lost, leading to higher prices and threats to the firms’ financial viability.
Three insights arise from this discussion. First, from Japan comes the understanding that retiring copper moves the responsibility for power resilience from exchanges to individual consumer premises—arguably reducing communications resilience in the face of climate change and other environmental and geopolitical uncertainty. Second, from New Zealand comes a challenge to the assumption that fiber networks must be expanded to replace copper. Gigabyte speeds might be nice to have but are expensive, and the speeds obtained on fixed wireless and satellite are both cost- and application-effective. Third, European evidence questions whether policy should force copper operators to retire copper if they don’t want (or can’t afford) to.
Much food for thought for the US debate.