AT&T is one of the mobile industry’s largest wireless carriers in the US, offering wireless and wireline services to a massive number of customers across the country, only it seems AT&T wants to stop providing wireline services to a specific area of California, and it has allegedly lied to the FCC in an attempt to get that approval.
In a recent filing on June 15 from California state regulators, it has been alleged that AT&T lied to the FCC so that it would get approval from the agency to discontinue service that’s based on an older copper-based phone network. Stopping this service would essentially cut off about 199,000 people. Leaving them without an alternative. At least that’s how California state regulators are positioning things.
AT&T said to have lied to the FCC about California preventing the carrier from discontinuing service
According to the California regulators, AT&T has argued that the state of California has prevented the carrier from shutting down its copper phone line network and investing money in Fiber. California says that AT&T has used this same argument for years, and that it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
The main issue from the state appears to be that AT&T doesn’t offer a sufficient replacement for wireline phone services in the area it wants to shut down the network. According to the regulators, AT&T has tried to show that its mobile wireless network would be a capable alternative. However, California regulators are arguing that this is not an adequate replacement for copper-based phone lines. This argument is being propped up by examples of AT&T’s phone coverage maps for the US. Which, according to regulators, are not representative of what coverage is like inside homes or buildings. Instead, the maps represent what coverage is like if customers are “outside and stationary.”
In addition to coverage inequality, California regulators are arguing that wireless service could end up costing customers more than wireline services. What’s more, that it could cause reliability for 911 calls if a customer ever needs to contact emergency services. It isn’t yet clear if AT&T will be allowed to discontinue this old phone network.
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