State utility regulators Thursday unanimously shot down a massively unpopular proposal by AT&T to scrap landline service for most of the Bay Area and much of California that critics charged would have stripped many older people and rural residents of a communications lifeline in power outages and disasters such as fires and floods.
The Utility Reform Network estimated that hundreds of thousands of households in the Bay Area and millions around California would have lost landline service if the California Public Utilities Commission had approved AT&T’s proposal.
“It’s a great victory for Californians,” said Regina Costa, telecommunications policy director for The Utility Reform Network.
Meanwhile, AT&T is backing proposed California state legislation that San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller on Thursday called an attempted “end run” around the utility commission’s decision.
The commission voted on whether to adopt a decision last month by an administrative law judge to deny the telecommunications giant’s plan. Judge Thomas Glegola excoriated AT&T for making “flawed and erroneous assertions regarding the law and regulatory policy” and said no alternative landline provider exists to take the company’s place. Services the utility claimed could replace landlines, including internet-based phone service and cell service, could not do the job either, Glegola wrote.
In response to the vote, AT&T said it “wants to keep our customers connected and help them upgrade to modern technology.”
The company’s plan to stop being the designated “carrier of last resort,” requiring it to provide phone service to anyone wanting it in its service area, drew furious opposition from thousands of residents all over California who voiced their concerns in comments to the commission. Governments including Santa Clara, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties attacked the proposal, along with 11 members of the U.S. Congress, including four from the Bay Area.
Internet and cell phone services are unreliable in many rural areas and unavailable in some. Storms and wildfires in recent years have shown that internet and cell phone services frequently go down because of damaged infrastructure and power loss.
AT&T applied to the commission in March 2023 to exit as carrier of last resort. The telecommunications giant told this news organization in February that fewer than 7% of households in its territory use traditional landlines, “and a great number of those households also have alternatives available where they live.” In its proposal to the utilities commission, AT&T claimed its landline services were “fast becoming a historical curiosity” and serve no “valid public purpose.”
Bay Area members of Congress Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Anna Eshoo and Mark DeSaulnier joined 11 other California U.S. representatives in telling the commission in a Feb. 20 letter that the proposal threatened public safety “in an area plagued by earthquakes, severe storms, floods, and fires, and that has a geography that often disrupts cellular service for days, if not weeks, at a time.”
Concerns also arose over the loss of landline services for people with disabilities. Christine Khoury, of Belmont, suffered hearing loss from nearly three decades as a South San Francisco 911 dispatcher with sirens and horns blasting through her headset. The utility commission’s vote made her day, said Khoury, 71.
“On a landline, I hear very well,” Khoury said. “On a cell phone, I have a really hard time.”
This week, Santa Clara County’s Office of the County Executive took aim at AT&T’s plan, with county executive James Williams pointing out that many county residents “live in areas where mobile phone and internet service is non-existent or spotty, and rely on landline telephone services, especially in an emergency.”
San Mateo County officials earlier attacked the utility’s claim that cell phone and internet-phone service can replace landlines, arguing that power outages and disaster-damaged infrastructure have shown those technologies to be unreliable.
Santa Cruz County supervisors also criticized the plan, including Manu Koenig, who reported at a February county meeting that he had heard from “people who are frankly terrified at the idea of these lines going away and rightfully so.”
AT&T became the carrier of last resort due to its previous monopoly status and state law requiring voice communications for all who wanted them.
The company is throwing its weight behind California state Assembly Bill 2797, which would allow it to drop landline services to urban areas if it notified the utilities commission that at least two other voice-communications providers operate there and that one of those companies offers rates no more than 25% higher than AT&T’s basic-service price.
“The proposed legislation includes important protections, safeguards, and outreach for consumers and does not impact our customers in rural locations,” AT&T said in a statement. “We are fully committed to keeping our customers connected while we work with state leaders on policies that create a thoughtful transition that brings modern communications to all Californians.”
Supervisor Mueller said the company is trying to skirt the utilities commission and push the plan to scrap landline services into the state legislature, where “AT&T spends significant amounts of money on campaign contributions and other political contributions.”
Costa said the proposed law would qualify cable and cell phone companies as voice-services providers to replace AT&T, which could leave people without communications in the event of power and service outages.
What AT&T wants, Costa claimed, “is just to be able to walk out the door.”